Neuromorphic Instantiation of Spiking Half-Centered Oscillator Models for Central Pattern Generation.

Abstract

In both invertebrate and vertebrate animals, small networks called central pattern generators (CPGs) form the building blocks of the neuronal circuits involved in locomotion. Most CPGs contain a simple half-center oscillator (HCO) motif which consists of two neurons, or populations of neurons, connected by reciprocal inhibition. CPGs and HCOs are well characterized neuronal networks and have been extensively modeled at different levels of abstraction. In the past two decades, hardware implementation of spiking CPG and HCO models in neuromorphic hardware has opened up new applications in mobile robotics, computational neuroscience, and neuroprosthetics. Despite their relative simplicity, the parameter space of GPG and HCO models can become exhaustive when considering various neuron models and network topologies. Motivated by computational work in neuroscience that used a brute-force approach to generate a large database of millions of simulations of the heartbeat HCO of the leech, we have started to build a database of spiking chains of multiple HCOs for different neuron model types and network topologies. Here we present preliminary results using the Izhikevich and Morris-Lecar neuron models for single and pairs of HCOs with different inter-HCO coupling schemes.