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MiS Preprint
49/2007
Random perturbations of spiking activity in a pair of coupled neurons
Boris Gutkin, Jürgen Jost and Henry Tuckwell
Abstract
We examine the effects of stochastic input currents on the firing behaviour of two coupled Type 1 or Type 2 neurons. In Hodgkin-Huxley model neurons with standard parameters, which are Type 2, in the bistable regime, synaptic transmission can initiate oscillatory joint spiking, but white noise can terminate it. In Type 1 cells (models), typified by a quadratic integrate and fire model, synaptic coupling can cause oscillatory behaviour in excitatory cells, but Gaussian white noise can again terminate it. We locally determine an approximate basin of attraction, ${\cal A}$, of the periodic orbit and explain the firing behaviour in terms of the effects of noise on the probability of escape of trajectories from ${\cal A}$.
