Feedforward inhibition and synaptic scaling - two sides of the same coin?

  • Feedforward inhibition and synaptic scaling are important adaptive processes that control the total input a neuron can receive from its afferents. While often studied in isolation, the two have been reported to co-occur in various brain regions. The functional implications of their interactions remain unclear, however. Based on a probabilistic modeling approach, we show here that fast feedforward inhibition and synaptic scaling interact synergistically during unsupervised learning. In technical terms, we model the input to a neural circuit using a normalized mixture model with Poisson noise. We demonstrate analytically and numerically that, in the presence of lateral inhibition introducing competition between different neurons, Hebbian plasticity and synaptic scaling approximate the optimal maximum likelihood solutions for this model. Our results suggest that, beyond its conventional use as a mechanism to remove undesired pattern variations, input normalization can make typical neural interaction and learning rules optimal on the stimulus subspace defined through feedforward inhibition. Furthermore, learning within this subspace is more efficient in practice, as it helps avoid locally optimal solutions. Our results suggest a close connection between feedforward inhibition and synaptic scaling which may have important functional implications for general cortical processing.

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Metadaten
Author:Christian Keck, Cristina Savin, Jörg Lücke
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-240996
DOI:https://doi.org/doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002432
ISSN:1553-7358
ISSN:1553-734X
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22457610
Parent Title (English):PLoS Computational Biology
Publisher:Public Library of Science
Place of publication:San Francisco, Calif.
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2012/04/25
Date of first Publication:2012/03/22
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2012/04/25
Volume:8
Issue:3: e1002432
Page Number:15
HeBIS-PPN:31217408X
Institutes:Physik / Physik
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS)
Dewey Decimal Classification:5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 57 Biowissenschaften; Biologie / 570 Biowissenschaften; Biologie
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Sammlung Biologie / Sondersammelgebiets-Volltexte
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0