Functional properties of feed-forward inhibition

Jens Kremkow (1, 2) , Laurent Perrinet (1) , Ad Aertsen (2, 3) , Guillaume S. Masson (1)

1 INCM - Institut de neurosciences cognitives de la méditerranée - UMR 6193
2 Neurobiology and Biophysics, Institute of Biology
3 Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience [Berlin]

Neurons receive a large number of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs whose temporal interplay determines the spiking behavior. On average, excitation and inhibition balance each other, such that spikes are elicited by fluctuations. In addition, it has been shown in vivo that excitation and inhibition are correlated, with inhibition lagging excitation only by few milliseconds (~6 ms), creating a small temporal integration window. This correlation structure could be induced by feed-forward inhibition (FFI), which has been shown to be present at many sites in the central nervous system. To characterize the functional properties of feed-forward inhibition, we constructed a simple circuit using spiking neurons with conductance based synapses and applied spike pulse packets with defined strength and width. We found that the small temporal integration window, induced by the FFI, changes the integrative properties of the neuron. Only transient stimuli could produce a response when the FFI was active, whereas without FFI the neuron responded to both steady and transient stimuli. In addition, the FFI increased the trial-by-trial precision.

Mots clés: Neural coding; Spiking neurons; Simulation; Vision

Domaines: Neurosciences [q-bio.NC]; Neurosciences

Jens Kremkow, Laurent Perrinet, Ad Aertsen, Guillaume S. Masson. Functional properties of feed-forward inhibition. Deuxième conférence française de Neurosciences Computationnelles, "Neurocomp08", Oct 2008, Marseille, France. ⟨hal-00331560⟩