The Complex Behaviour of a Simple Neural Oscillator Model in the Human Cortex.
Journal:
IEEE transactions on neural systems and rehabilitation engineering : a publication of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
Published Date:
Nov 28, 2018
Abstract
The brain is a complex organ responsible for memory storage and reasoning; however, the mechanisms underlying these processes remain unknown. This paper forms a contribution to a lot of theoretical studies devoted to regular or chaotic oscillations of interconnected neurons assuming that the smallest information unit in the brain is not a neuron but, instead, a coupling of inhibitory and excitatory neurons forming a simple oscillator. Several coefficients of variation for peak intervals and correlation coefficients for peak interval histograms are evaluated and the sensitivity of such oscillator units is tested to changes in initial membrane potentials, interconnection signal delays, and changes in synaptic weights based on known histologically verified neuron couplings. Results present only a low dependence of oscillation patterns to changes in initial membrane potentials or interconnection signal delays in comparison to a strong sensitivity to changes in synaptic weights showing the stability and robustness of encoded oscillating patterns to signal outages or remoteness of interconnected neurons. Presented simulations prove that the selected neuronal couplings are able to produce a variety of different behavioural patterns, with periodicity ranging from milliseconds to thousands of milliseconds between the spikes. Many detected different intrinsic frequencies then support the idea of possibly large informational capacity of such memory units.