Dependency of gamma oscillations in E/I neuronal network on illumination contrast of external stimulus

Abstract

Synchronous gamma oscillations are believed to play a prominent role in the information processing of biological neural systems. Experimental observations have found that the frequency and power of gamma oscillations in the primary visual cortex (V1 zone) are regulated by the illumination contrast of visual stimulus. However, the underlying mechanism of how the synchronous oscillations depend on the illumination contrast has not been well explained. We propose a local excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) neuronal network of integrate-and-fire (IAF) neurons with the difference-of-Gaussians (DOG) receptive field to unveil this mechanism. Simulation results demonstrate that the higher the illumination contrast, the higher the frequency of gamma oscillations. The power of gamma oscillations also increases with the increase of illumination contrast. These results are consistent with the experimental findings.