Effect of the topology and delayed interactions in neuronal networks synchronization

  • As important as the intrinsic properties of an individual nervous cell stands the network of neurons in which it is embedded and by virtue of which it acquires great part of its responsiveness and functionality. In this study we have explored how the topological properties and conduction delays of several classes of neural networks affect the capacity of their constituent cells to establish well-defined temporal relations among firing of their action potentials. This ability of a population of neurons to produce and maintain a millisecond-precise coordinated firing (either evoked by external stimuli or internally generated) is central to neural codes exploiting precise spike timing for the representation and communication of information. Our results, based on extensive simulations of conductance-based type of neurons in an oscillatory regime, indicate that only certain topologies of networks allow for a coordinated firing at a local and long-range scale simultaneously. Besides network architecture, axonal conduction delays are also observed to be another important factor in the generation of coherent spiking. We report that such communication latencies not only set the phase difference between the oscillatory activity of remote neural populations but determine whether the interconnected cells can set in any coherent firing at all. In this context, we have also investigated how the balance between the network synchronizing effects and the dispersive drift caused by inhomogeneities in natural firing frequencies across neurons is resolved. Finally, we show that the observed roles of conduction delays and frequency dispersion are not particular to canonical networks but experimentally measured anatomical networks such as the macaque cortical network can display the same type of behavior.

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Metadaten
Author:Toni Pérez, Guadalupe C. Garcia, Víctor M. Eguíluz, Raul VicenteORCiD, Gordon PipaORCiDGND, Claudio R. Mirasso
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-113998
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019900
ISSN:1932-6203
Parent Title (English):PLoS One
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2011/03/27
Date of first Publication:2011/03/27
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2011/09/01
Volume:6
Issue:(5): e19900
Note:
Copyright: © 2011 Perez et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Source:PLoS ONE 6(5): e19900. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019900
HeBIS-PPN:274976358
Institutes:Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS)
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0