On a voltage-conductance kinetic system for integrate&fire neural networks

The voltage-conductance kinetic equation for integrate and fire neurons has been used in neurosciences since a decade and describes the probability density of neurons in a network. It is used when slow conductance receptors are activated and noticeable applications to the visual cortex have been worked-out. In the simplest case, the derivation also uses the assumption of fully excitatory and moderately all-to-all coupled networks; this is the situation we consider here. We study properties of solutions of the kinetic equation for steady states and time evolution and we prove several global a priori bounds both on the probability density and the firing rate of the network. The main difficulties are related to the degeneracy of the diffusion resulting from noise and to the quadratic aspect of the nonlinearity. This result constitutes a paradox; the solutions of the kinetic model, of partially hyperbolic nature, are globally bounded but it has been proved that the fully parabolic integrate and fire equation (some kind of diffusion limit of the former) blows-up in finite time. Mathematics Subject Classification : 35Q84; 62M45; 82C32; 92B20 Key-words : Integrate-and-fire networks; Voltage-conductance kinetic equation; Neural networks; Fokker-Planck equation