  The oscillatory nature of the cortical local field potential (LFP) is
commonly interpreted as a reflection of synchronized network activity, but its
relationship to observed transient coincident firing of neurons on the
millisecond time-scale remains unclear. Here we present experimental evidence
to reconcile the notions of synchrony at the level of neuronal spiking and at
the mesoscopic scale. We demonstrate that only in time intervals of excess
spike synchrony, coincident spikes are better entrained to the LFP than
predicted by the locking of the individual spikes. This effect is enhanced in
periods of large LFP amplitudes. A quantitative model explains the LFP dynamics
by the orchestrated spiking activity in neuronal groups that contribute the
observed surplus synchrony. From the correlation analysis, we infer that
neurons participate in different constellations but contribute only a fraction
of their spikes to temporally precise spike configurations, suggesting a dual
coding scheme of rate and synchrony. This finding provides direct evidence for
the hypothesized relation that precise spike synchrony constitutes a major
temporally and spatially organized component of the LFP. Revealing that
transient spike synchronization correlates not only with behavior, but with a
mesoscopic brain signal corroborates its relevance in cortical processing.
