title: Modeling synaptic plasticity in conjuction with the timing of pre- and postsynaptic action potentials.
abstract: We present a spiking neuron model that allows for an analytic calculation of the correlations between pre- and postsynaptic spikes. The neuron model is a generalization of the integrate-and-fire model and equipped with a probabilistic spike-triggering mechanism. We show that under certain biologically plausible conditions, pre- and postsynaptic spike trains can be described simultaneously as an inhomogeneous Poisson process. Inspired by experimental findings, we develop a model for synaptic long-term plasticity that relies on the relative timing of pre- and post-synaptic action potentials. Being given an input statistics, we compute the stationary synaptic weights that result from the temporal correlations between the pre- and postsynaptic spikes. By means of both analytic calculations and computer simulations, we show that such a mechanism of synaptic plasticity is able to strengthen those input synapses that convey precisely timed spikes at the expense of synapses that deliver spikes with a broad temporal distribution. This may be of vital importance for any kind of information processing based on spiking neurons and temporal coding.
authors.affiliation: Physik Department der TU München, D-85747 Garching bei München, Germany.
authors.forename: W M
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Kistler
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: van Hemmen
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials; D000818:Animals; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D017729:Presynaptic Terminals / Q000502:physiology; D011336:Probability; D013569:Synapses / Q000502:physiology*