Dynamics of spiking neurons connected by both inhibitory and electrical coupling

Timothy J. Lewis, John Rinzel

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We study the dynamics of a pair of intrinsically oscillating leaky integrate-and-fire neurons (identical and noise-free) connected by combinations of electrical and inhibitory coupling. We use the theory of weakly coupled oscillators to examine how synchronization patterns are influenced by cellular properties (intrinsic frequency and the strength of spikes) and coupling parameters (speed of synapses and coupling strengths). We find that, when inhibitory synapses are fast and the electrotonic effect of the suprathreshold portion of the spike is large, increasing the strength of weak electrical coupling promotes synchrony. Conversely, when inhibitory synapses are slow and the electrotonic effect of the suprathreshold portion of the spike is small, increasing the strength of weak electrical coupling promotes antisynchrony (see Fig. 10). Furthermore, our results indicate that, given a fixed total coupling strength, either electrical coupling alone or inhibition alone is better at enhancing neural synchrony than a combination of electrical and inhibitory coupling. We also show that these results extend to moderate coupling strengths.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)283-309
Number of pages27
JournalJournal of Computational Neuroscience
Volume14
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2003

Keywords

  • Electrical coupling
  • Gap junctions
  • Inhibition
  • Synchrony

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Sensory Systems
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

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