Phase-locking patterns underlying effective communication in exact firing rate models of neural networks

by David Reyner-Parra, Gemma Huguet

Macroscopic oscillations in the brain have been observed to be involved in many cognitive tasks but their role is not completely understood. One of the suggested functions of the oscillations is to dynamically modulate communication between neural circuits. The Communication Through Coherence (CTC ) theory proposes that oscillations reflect rhythmic changes in excitability of the neuronal populations. Thus, populations need to be properly phase-locked so that input volleys arrive at the peaks of excitability of the receiving population to communicate effectively. Here, we present a modeling s tudy to explore synchronization between neuronal circuits connected with unidirectional projections. We consider an Excitatory-Inhibitory (E-I) network of quadratic integrate-and-fire neurons modeling a Pyramidal-Interneuronal Network Gamma (PING) rhythm. The network receives an external periodic in put from either one or two sources, simulating the inputs from other oscillating neural groups. We use recently developed mean-field models which provide an exact description of the macroscopic activity of the spiking network. This low-dimensional mean field model allows us to use tools from bifurca tion theory to identify the phase-locked states between the input and the target population as a function of the amplitude, frequency and coherence of the inputs. We identify the conditions for optimal phase-locking and effective communication. We find that inp...

Source: PLoS Computational Biology - May 18, 2022 Category: Biology Authors: David Reyner-Parra Source Type: research