Key role of voltage-dependent properties of synaptic currents in robust network synchronization.

Abstract

Robust synchronized activity is ubiquitous in real neural networks. Diverse synaptic properties contribute to such robust synchronization. Synaptic current induced by an input spike is dependent on the voltage of post-synaptic neuron in real neural systems. Current-based synapse models, which neglect the voltage-dependent properties of synaptic currents, are widely used for analysis of robust synchronization in neural networks due to their simplicity. However, it was found in this paper that the voltage-dependent properties of synaptic currents play a key role in robust network synchronization in most cases, implying that current-based synapses are oversimplified for analysis of robust network synchronization.