PLoS Computational Biology (Nov 2021)

Self-organization of a doubly asynchronous irregular network state for spikes and bursts.

  • Filip Vercruysse,
  • Richard Naud,
  • Henning Sprekeler

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009478
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 17, no. 11
p. e1009478

Abstract

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Cortical pyramidal cells (PCs) have a specialized dendritic mechanism for the generation of bursts, suggesting that these events play a special role in cortical information processing. In vivo, bursts occur at a low, but consistent rate. Theory suggests that this network state increases the amount of information they convey. However, because burst activity relies on a threshold mechanism, it is rather sensitive to dendritic input levels. In spiking network models, network states in which bursts occur rarely are therefore typically not robust, but require fine-tuning. Here, we show that this issue can be solved by a homeostatic inhibitory plasticity rule in dendrite-targeting interneurons that is consistent with experimental data. The suggested learning rule can be combined with other forms of inhibitory plasticity to self-organize a network state in which both spikes and bursts occur asynchronously and irregularly at low rate. Finally, we show that this network state creates the network conditions for a recently suggested multiplexed code and thereby indeed increases the amount of information encoded in bursts.