In this chapter, we provide an overview of the dynamical properties of spontaneous activity in the cortex, as represented by the subthreshold membrane potential fluctuations of the cortical neurons. First, we discuss the main findings from various intracellular recording studies performed in anesthetized animals as well as from a handful of studies in awake animals. Then, we focus on two specific questions pertaining to random and deterministic properties of cortical spontaneous activity. One of the questions is the relationship between excitation and inhibition, which is shown to posses a well-defined structure, owing to the spatio-temporal organization of the spontaneous activity in local cortical circuits at the millisecond scale. The other question regards the spontaneous activity at a scale of seconds and minutes. Here, examination of repeating patterns in subthreshold voltage fluctuations failed to reveal any evidence for deterministic structures.