The probability of a pair having no chemical or electrical connection was p = 0.340; electrical only p = 0.295; chemical only p = 0.214; dual chemical and electrical p = 0.121; bidirectional chemical p = 0.024; and bidirectional chemical with electrical p = 0.005. To test

whether these results are consistent with the null hypothesis (“connectivity is random”), it was necessary to generate synthetic connectivity data defined as random and compare it to the real data. Any significant difference would disprove the null hypothesis and show nonrandom features of connectivity. We can formulate two sets of predictions for the pairwise connection probabilities, both based on random statistics. The first one only assumes that all chemical and electrical connections are made independently of each selleck chemicals other with the average connection

probabilities pE = 0.42 and pC = 0.20 (Figure 3A, top; Supplemental Experimental Procedures). It represents a simple model of locally uniform random synaptic connectivity between pairs of cells. We name this first model the “uniform random” model. The second, more complex model also assumes that all connections are made independently of each other, but the probability of a connection depends on the intersomatic distance in xy and z (Figure 3A, bottom). We constructed the model of distance dependence using the distributions observed in the data (Figures 2A, 2B, S2D, and S2E). We call this second model the “nonuniform random” model. In addition, we also tested two random models that include CP-868596 in vivo the position of the cells in the molecular layer (ML) as a parameter (Figure S3). The probabilities of the different connection types between pairs predicted by the two models (Figure 3B; light and dark gray bars) were compared to the data (green bars, n = 420 pairs). For most of the connection types the ratio of the predicted to the actual connection Tolmetin probability is not significantly different from

1. The occurrence of fully connected (bidirectional chemical and electrical) pairs is significantly lower than predicted by both random models (p = 0.046 and 0.004 for the uniform and nonuniform random predictions, respectively; though the difference is not significant when including ML position in the random model, Figures S4A and S4B). The occurrence of bidirectional chemical connections at the random level is in contrast to excitatory connections between layer 5 pyramidal cells, where they are overrepresented (Markram et al., 1997, Song et al., 2005 and Perin et al., 2011). In addition, the number of dual connections is at the level expected if electrical and chemical synapses are formed independently of each other. Thus, the fact that only small differences were observed compared to the predictions appears to suggest that random connectivity is an adequate model at the pair level for these interneuron networks. We next examined connectivity motifs involving more than two neurons.