Abstract
This numerical study documents and analyzes emergent spiking behavior in local neuronal populations. Emphasis is given to a phenomenon we call clustering, by which we refer to a tendency of random groups of neurons large and small to spontaneously coordinate their spiking activity in some fashion. Using a sparsely connected network of integrate-and-fire neurons, we demonstrate that spike clustering occurs ubiquitously in both high firing and low firing regimes. As a practical tool for quantifying such spike patterns, we propose a simple scheme with two parameters, one setting the temporal scale and the other the amount of deviation from the mean to be regarded as significant. Viewing population activity as a sequence of events, meaning relatively brief durations of elevated spiking, separated by inter-event times, we observe that background activity tends to give rise to extremely broad distributions of event sizes and inter-event times, while driving a system imposes a certain regularity on its inter-event times, producing a rhythm consistent with broad-band gamma oscillations. We note also that event sizes and inter-event times decorrelate very quickly. Dynamical analyses supported by numerical evidence are offered.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 203-220 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Journal of Computational Neuroscience |
Volume | 38 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 2015 |
Keywords
- Emergent dynamics
- Neuronal networks
- Population activity
- Spike clusters
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sensory Systems
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience