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What can neurons do for their brain? Communicate selectivity with bursts

2013

Article

ei


Neurons deep in cortex interact with the environment extremely indirectly; the spikes they receive and produce are pre- and post-processed by millions of other neurons. This paper proposes two information-theoretic constraints guiding the production of spikes, that help ensure bursting activity deep in cortex relates meaningfully to events in the environment. First, neurons should emphasize selective responses with bursts. Second, neurons should propagate selective inputs by burst-firing in response to them. We show the constraints are necessary for bursts to dominate information-transfer within cortex, thereby providing a substrate allowing neurons to distribute credit amongst themselves. Finally, since synaptic plasticity degrades the ability of neurons to burst selectively, we argue that homeostatic regulation of synaptic weights is necessary, and that it is best performed offline during sleep.

Author(s): Balduzzi, D. and Tononi, G.
Journal: Theory in Biosciences
Volume: 132
Number (issue): 1
Pages: 27-39
Year: 2013
Month: March
Day: 0
Publisher: Springer

Department(s): Empirical Inference
Bibtex Type: Article (article)

Digital: True
DOI: 10.1007/s12064-012-0165-0
ISBN: 1611-7530
State: Published

Links: PDF
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BibTex

@article{DalduzziT2012,
  title = {What can neurons do for their brain? Communicate selectivity with bursts},
  author = {Balduzzi, D. and Tononi, G.},
  journal = {Theory in Biosciences },
  volume = {132},
  number = {1},
  pages = {27-39},
  publisher = {Springer},
  month = mar,
  year = {2013},
  doi = {10.1007/s12064-012-0165-0},
  month_numeric = {3}
}