Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 22: Posters I

DY 22.16: Poster

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 17:00–19:00, Poster A

Up- down state switching in a conductance- based cortical model — •Arne Weigenand, Thomas Martinetz, and Jens Christian Claussen — Institut für Neuro- und Bioinformatik, Universität zu Lübeck

Cortical slow oscillations occur in the mammalian brain during deep sleep and have been shown to contribute to memory consolidation, an effect that can be enhanced by electrical stimulation. As the precise underlying working mechanisms are not known it is desired to develop and analyze computational models of slow oscillations and to study the response to electrical stimuli. In this paper we employ the conductance based model of Compte et al. [J Neurophysiol 89, 2707] to study the effect of electrical stimulation. First we reproduce the experimental results of electrical stimulation in ferret brain slices by Shu et al. [Nature 423, 288] from the conductance based model. The electrical stimulation leads to collective responses which we observe to depend on the timing of the stimulus with respect to the state of the slow oscillation. To quantify the network response on stimulation we calculate the phase response curve for the conductance based network model. Within the up state stimulation leads to a shortening of the up state, or phase advance, whereas during the up-down transition a prolongation of up states is possible, resulting in a phase delay. Finally we derive the phase response curve also for the simple mean-field model by Ngo et al. [epl Europhysics Letters 89, 68002] and find that the qualitative shape is preserved.
[1] A. Weigenand, T. Martinetz and J.C. Claussen, submitted