Non-Markovian spiking statistics of a neuron with delayed feedback in presence of refractoriness

Abstract

Spiking statistics of a self-inhibitory neuron is considered. The neuron receives excitatory input from a Poisson stream and inhibitory impulses through a feedback line with a delay. After triggering, the neuron is in the refractory state for a positive period of time. Recently, [35,6], it was proven for a neuron with delayed feedback and without the refractory state, that the output stream of interspike intervals (ISI) cannot be represented as a Markov process. The refractory state presence, in a sense limits the memory range in the spiking process, which might restore Markov property to the ISI stream. Here we check such a possibility. For this purpose, we calculate the conditional probability density P (tn+1 l tn,...,t1,t0), and prove exactly that it does not reduce to P (tn+1 l tn,...,t1) for any n ⋝0. That means, that activity of the system with refractory state as well cannot be represented as a Markov process of any order. We conclude that it is namely the delayed feedback presence which results in non-Markovian statistics of neuronal firing. As delayed feedback lines are common for any realistic neural network, the non-Markovian statistics of the network activity should be taken into account in processing of experimental data.