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We have decided to discontinue the publication of preprints on our preprint server as of 1 March 2024. The publication culture within mathematics has changed so much due to the rise of repositories such as ArXiV (www.arxiv.org) that we are encouraging all institute members to make their preprints available there. An institute's repository in its previous form is, therefore, unnecessary. The preprints published to date will remain available here, but we will not add any new preprints here.

MiS Preprint
13/2012

Analysis of inverse stochastic resonance and long-term firing in Hodgkin-Huxley neurons

Henry Tuckwell and Jürgen Jost

Abstract

In order to explain the occurrence of a minimum in firing rate which occurs for certain mean input levels $\mu$ as noise level $\sigma$ increases (inverse stochastic resonance, ISR) in Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) systems, we analyse the underlying transitions from a stable equilibrium point to limit cycle and vice-versa.

For a value of $\mu$ at which ISR is pronounced, properties of the corresponding stable equilibrium point are found. A linearized approximation around this point has oscillatory solutions from whose maxima spikes tend to occur. A one dimensional diffusion is also constructed for small noise. Properties of the basin of attraction of the limit cycle (spike) are investigated heuristically. Long term trials of duration 500000 ms are carried out for values of $\sigma$ from 0 to 2.0.

The graph of mean spike count versus $\sigma$ is divided into 4 regions $R_1,...,R_4,$ where $R_3$ contains the minimum associated with ISR. In $R_1$ transitions to the basin of attraction of the rest point are not observed until a small critical value of $\sigma = \sigma_{c_1}$ is reached, at the beginning of $R_2$. The sudden decline in firing rate when $\sigma$ is just greater than $\sigma_{c_1}$ implies that there is only a small range of noise levels $0 < \sigma < \sigma_{c_1}$ where repetitive spiking is safe from annihilation by noise. The firing rate remains small throughout $R_3$. At a larger critical value $\sigma = \sigma_{c_2}$ which signals the beginning of $R_4$, the probability of transitions from the basin of attraction of the equilibrium point to that of the limit cycle apparently becomes greater than zero and the spike rate thereafter increases with increasing $\sigma$. The quantitative scheme underlying the ISR curve is outlined in terms of the properties of exit time random variables.

In the final subsection, several statistical properties of the main random variables associated with long term spiking activity are given, including distributions of exit times from the two relevant basins of attraction and the interspike interval.

Received:
Feb 25, 2012
Published:
Mar 1, 2012
Keywords:
Hodgkin-Huxley, Stochastic analysis

Related publications

inJournal
2012 Repository Open Access
Henry C. Tuckwell and Jürgen Jost

Analysis of inverse stochastic resonance and the long-term firing of Hodgkin-Huxley neurons with Gaussian white noise

In: Physica / A, 391 (2012) 22, pp. 5311-5325