Investigations on emergent spatio-temporal neural response characteristics in a small network model.
Although the functional role synchronous oscillations may play has been investigated in depth, the underlying processes and spatio-temporal aspects that establish the synchrony are still not thoroughly understood. Experimental studies suggest the existence of two types of activity: stimulus locked and stimulus induced. While stimulus-locked oscillations are systematically dependent on the stimulus (they are phase-locked to stimulus transients), stimulus-induced activity patterns (occurring in the gamma-frequency range) show no such phase-locking. We propose a unifying approach which employs very generic connection structures. The above-mentioned two types of activity patterns with different temporal properties are observed as an emergent feature of the network structure. Our model demonstrates that stimulus-locked and stimulus-induced activity patterns are two distinct states of the same system. A transition from one state to the other is observed, and the influence of structural network parameters (e.g. connections strengths) on this behavior and its dependence on stimulus situations is investigated.
Quill
U
U
Institute of Physiology, Department of Neurophysiology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. quill@neurop2.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Wörgötter
F
F
D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009415:Nerve Net; D014795:Visual Pathways