Neural Timescale Analysis · good_isttc

Intrinsic timescales
across brain regions

Spontaneous spiking activity from 154 sessions. Autocorrelation decay fitted with 1–4 exponential components. All units passed quality filter (r² > 0.5, CI excludes zero, ACF decline 50–200 ms).

23,660
Total units
4.3 Hz
Median firing rate
300 ms
Median τ effective
199
Unique brain regions
01
Timescale × Brain Region
Median effective timescale (τ) for the 15 most-sampled regions, sorted descending.
τ > 500 ms 200–500 ms τ < 200 ms
Key finding: PRNr (926 ms), MRN (727 ms) and SSs (705 ms) show the longest timescales — consistent with brainstem/motor regions maintaining sustained activity states. Hippocampal and cortical regions (CA1, CA3, PAR) show the shortest timescales (<100 ms), suggesting rapid information turnover.
02
Timescale × Firing Rate
Median τ effective per firing rate bin, with unit count overlay.
Median τ (left axis) Unit count (right axis)
Pattern: Very low firing rate units (0–1 Hz) show shorter τ (~183 ms). The peak timescale occurs in the 20–50 Hz bin (432 ms). Mid-rate units (2–10 Hz) form the bulk of the population (10,650 units).
03
Timescale × Local Variance (LV)
LV measures inter-spike interval regularity. LV ≈ 1 is Poisson-like; LV < 1 is more regular; LV > 1 is more bursty.
Median τ effective (ms)
Strong negative relationship: Regular spiking (LV < 0.5) is associated with very long τ (~844 ms). High variability (LV > 2.0) corresponds to extremely short τ (~9 ms). Spiking regularity is a strong predictor of intrinsic timescale.
04 — 05
τ Distribution & N Timescales
Left: histogram of τ effective across all 23,660 units. Right: number of exponential components needed to fit the ACF.
Unit count per τ bin
Right-skewed: Majority of units cluster below 500 ms (bin peak: 9,817 units in 0–200 ms). Long tail extends to ~6,000 ms.
n_timescales distribution
59% of units best fit with 2 timescales. Only 22 units (0.09%) required 4 components.
06
Region Overview — Unit Counts & Firing Rates
Top 15 regions by unit count (left) and median vs mean firing rate comparison (right).
Unit count
Median FR (Hz) Mean FR (Hz)