title: Stochastic inference with spiking neurons in the high-conductance state.
abstract: The highly variable dynamics of neocortical circuits observed in vivo have been hypothesized to represent a signature of ongoing stochastic inference but stand in apparent contrast to the deterministic response of neurons measured in vitro. Based on a propagation of the membrane autocorrelation across spike bursts, we provide an analytical derivation of the neural activation function that holds for a large parameter space, including the high-conductance state. On this basis, we show how an ensemble of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons with conductance-based synapses embedded in a spiking environment can attain the correct firing statistics for sampling from a well-defined target distribution. For recurrent networks, we examine convergence toward stationarity in computer simulations and demonstrate sample-based Bayesian inference in a mixed graphical model. This points to a new computational role of high-conductance states and establishes a rigorous link between deterministic neuron models and functional stochastic dynamics on the network level.
authors.affiliation: Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Mihai A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Petrovici
authors.affiliation: Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.|Institute for Theoretical Computer Science, Graz University of Technology, Styria, Austria.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bill
authors.affiliation: Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Ilja
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bytschok
authors.affiliation: Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schemmel
authors.affiliation: Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Karlheinz
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Meier