The role of synaptic facilitation in coincidence spike detection

Jorge F. Mejias; Joaquin J. Torres

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The role of synaptic facilitation in coincidence spike detection

Jorge F. Mejias·Joaquin J. Torres

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Abstract

Using a realistic model of activity dependent dynamical synapses and a standard integrate and fire neuron model we study, both analytically and numerically, the conditions in which a postsynaptic neuron efficiently detects temporal coincidences of spikes arriving at certain frequency from N different afferents. We extend a previous work that only considers synaptic depression as the most important mechanism in the transmission of information through synapses, to a more general situation including also synaptic facilitation. Our study shows that: 1) facilitation enhances the detection of correlated signals arriving from a subset of presynaptic excitatory neurons, with different degrees of correlation among this subset, and 2) the presence of facilitation allows for a better detection of firing rate changes. Finally, we also observed that facilitation determines the existence of an optimal input frequency which allows the best performance for a wide (maximum) range of the neuron firing threshold. This optimal frequency can be controlled by means of facilitation parameters.

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Jorge F. Mejias, Joaquin J. Torres. 2006-05-03. The role of synaptic facilitation in coincidence spike detection. https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0605006

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