Regensburg 2004 – scientific programme

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DY: Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 24: Dynamic Instabilities in Biophysics

DY 24.4: Talk

Tuesday, March 9, 2004, 15:30–15:45, H2

Dynamics of Neurons with Residual Post-Spike Response to Synaptic Input Currents — •Christoph Kirst, Marc Timme, and Theo Geisel — Max-Planck-Institut für Strömungsforschung and Fakultät für Physik, Universität Göttingen, Bunsenstr. 10, 37073 Göttingen

Since the precise timing of spikes is believed to play an important role for information processing in the brain, many recent studies have been devoted to the spiking dynamics of neural networks. The response of a biological neuron to incoming post-synaptic currents strongly depends on whether or not it has just emitted an action potential (spike). This effect, however, has so far been neglected in most theoretical studies of driven single neurons as well as of neural networks, see e.g. [1,2].
Here we investigate the influence of a reduced post-spike neuronal response in spike-driven neural oscillators. Intriguingly, we find that the dynamics of a single neuron changes qualitatively, even if an arbitrarily small fraction of the post-synaptic current is lost due to spike emission. Implications for the dynamics of networks of neurons are discussed.

[1] K. Pakdaman, Phys. Rev. E 63:041907 (2001).
[2] P.C. Bressloff and S. Coombes, Neural Comput. 12:91 (2000).