title: Structured chaos shapes spike-response noise entropy in balanced neural networks.
abstract: Large networks of sparsely coupled, excitatory and inhibitory cells occur throughout the brain. For many models of these networks, a striking feature is that their dynamics are chaotic and thus, are sensitive to small perturbations. How does this chaos manifest in the neural code? Specifically, how variable are the spike patterns that such a network produces in response to an input signal? To answer this, we derive a bound for a general measure of variability-spike-train entropy. This leads to important insights on the variability of multi-cell spike pattern distributions in large recurrent networks of spiking neurons responding to fluctuating inputs. The analysis is based on results from random dynamical systems theory and is complemented by detailed numerical simulations. We find that the spike pattern entropy is an order of magnitude lower than what would be extrapolated from single cells. This holds despite the fact that network coupling becomes vanishingly sparse as network size grows-a phenomenon that depends on "extensive chaos," as previously discovered for balanced networks without stimulus drive. Moreover, we show how spike pattern entropy is controlled by temporal features of the inputs. Our findings provide insight into how neural networks may encode stimuli in the presence of inherently chaotic dynamics.
authors.affiliation: Nonlinear Dynamics Department, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization Goettingen, Germany ; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization Goettingen, Germany ; Applied Mathematics Department, University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA.
authors.forename: Guillaume
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lajoie
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Center for Neural Dynamics, University of Ottawa Ottawa, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Jean-Philippe
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Thivierge
authors.affiliation: Applied Mathematics Department, University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA ; Physiology and Biophysics Department, University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Shea-Brown
keywords: chaotic networks; network dynamics; neural excitability; neural variability; spiking stimulus responses