Effect of Synchronous Incoming Spikes on Activity Pattern in A Network of Spiking Neurons.pdf

Effect of Synchronous Incoming Spikes on Activity Pattern in A Network of Spiking Neurons Takaaki Aoki Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, 4 0 Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan 0 2 t Toshio Aoyagi c O Department of Applied Analysis and Complex Dynamical Systems, 5 2 Graduate School of Infomatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan ] (Dated: February 9, 2008) C N Abstract . o i Although recent neurophysiological experiments suggest that synchronous neural activity is in- b q- volved in some perceptual and cognitive processes, the functional role of such coherent neuronal [ behavior is not well understood. As a first step in clarifying this role, we investigate how the tem- 1 v poral coherence of certain neuronal activity affects the activity pattern in a neural network. Using 9 2 a simple network of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons, we study the effects of synchronized incoming 0 0 1 spikes on the functioning of two mechanisms typically used in model neural systems, winner-take- 4 0 all competition and associative memory. We demonstrate that a pair of switches undergone by / o the incoming spikes, from asynchronous to synchronous and then back to asynchronous, triggers a i b - transition of the network from one state to another state. In the case of associative memory, for q : v example, this switching controls the timing of the next recalling, whereas the firing rate pattern in i X the asynchronous state prepares the network for the next retrieval pattern. r a PACS