Mean-field method for generic conductance-based integrate-and-fire neurons with finite timescales.

Abstract

The construction of transfer functions in theoretical neuroscience plays an important role in determining the spiking rate behavior of neurons in networks. These functions can be obtained through various fitting methods, but the biological relevance of the parameters is not always clear. However, for stationary inputs, such functions can be obtained without the adjustment of free parameters by using mean-field methods. In this work, we expand current Fokker-Planck approaches to account for the concurrent influence of colored and multiplicative noise terms on generic conductance-based integrate-and-fire neurons. We reduce the resulting stochastic system through the application of the diffusion approximation to a one-dimensional Langevin equation. An effective Fokker-Planck is then constructed using Fox Theory, which is solved numerically using a newly developed double integration procedure to obtain the transfer function and the membrane potential distribution. The solution is capable of reproducing the transfer function and the stationary voltage distribution of simulated neurons across a wide range of parameters. The method can also be easily extended to account for different sources of noise with various multiplicative terms, and it can be used in other types of problems in principle.