Influences of autapse and channel blockage on multiple coherence resonance in a single neuron

Abstract

We study how the spiking regularity of a single stochastic Hodgkin–Huxley neuron is effected in the presence of ion channel blocking and autaptic connection. In this study, we consider a chemical autapse expressed by its coupling strength and delay time. It is found that the neuron exhibits multiple coherence resonance (MCR) behavior induced by autaptic time delay at an appropriate level of ion channel blocking and autaptic coupling strength. This MCR behavior increases with the decrement of working potassium ion channels, whereas it decreases or completely disappears with the increment of a fraction of sodium ion channels blocking, regardless of autaptic coupling strength. Furthermore, this behavior is more explicit at intermediate autaptic coupling strength regardless of the ion channel blocking type. We briefly discuss the obtained results with the underlying reasons in terms of ion channel blocking type and autapse parameters. We also showed that ion channel noise, thus membrane patch size, should be at an optimal level to obtain MCR behavior otherwise, this behavior would be destroyed. The obtained results also showed that autaptic time delay is more operative on regularity than its coupling strength regardless of ion channel blocking. Considering the importance of spiking regularity on neuronal information processing, our results may help to understand the intersection of ion channel blocking and autaptic connections of a single neuron.