Firing Patterns Depending on Model Neurons

An electrophysiological experiment showed that spike timing was precise to less than one millisecond. This result indicates the possibility in the precise time codings. For a high accurate time coding, reconsideration of a neural mechanism which decides firing time is required. From such viewpoint, we quantitatively examined change in firing time with interference between two synaptic inputs through Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) and integrate-and-fire (IF) model neurons. The precise firing times in the HH model neuron were extremely different from those in the IF model neuron. In this paper, the relations of input intensity to firing time are investigated in the other more two pulse generation models: Morris-Lecar (ML) and FitzHugh-Nagumo (FN) model. The result of the ML model in a certain parameter set (type-I) exhibited monotone decreasing like that of the IF model while the result of the ML model in the otter parameter set (type-II) exhibited non-monotone decreasing like that of the HH model. The result of the FN model exhibited non-monotone decreasing like the HH model despite its qualitativeness. Next the firing patterns in the four model neurons on a model of V1 (primary visual area) and LGN (lateral geniculate nucleus) with circular and mutual excitatory connections are investigated to show how dependent on model neurons the firing patterns are. The spikes in the HH, the ML type-II, and the FN model neurons elicited synchronous oscillations while the spikes in the IF and the ML type-I model neurons did not; the firing patterns dramatically changed with the dependence on the model neurons. key words: Hodgkin-Huxley model, integrate-and-fire model, Morris-Lecar model, FitzHugh-Nagumo model, oscillatory synchrony