Random perturbations of spiking activity in a pair of coupled neurons

Boris Gutkin, Jürgen Jost, and Henry Tuckwell

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Submission date: 16. May. 2007
Pages: 8
published in: Theory in biosciences, 127 (2008) 2, p. 135-139 
DOI number (of the published article): 10.1007/s12064-008-0039-7
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Abstract:
We examine the effects of stochastic input currents on the firing be- haviour 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 oscilla- tory behaviour in excitatory cells, but Gaussian white noise can again terminate it. We locally determine an approximate basin of attraction, 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 A.