Statistical study on reverberation between two mutually excitatory neuron groups

Abstract

The reverberation that occurs between two neuron groups, which have excitatory mono-synaptic random connections with each other can be studied theoretically by employing a model neuron, which expresses well the characters of a real neuron. In this model we consider three effects, which are; the effect of the summation of the excitatory post-synaptic potential (EPSP) of neurons; the effect of the spontaneous firing of neurons as a noise in groups and the effect of the relative refractory period of neurons. As a result, it is shown that under the effect of the summation of the EPSP of neurons and the effect of the noise, the systematic threshold p ϑ takes the same value as is observed in practice. The effect of the relative refractory period has been considered in order to explain the low speed of the increase in firing activity, as observed in the reverberating system. It suppresses slightly the speed of the increase in firing activity ( p i ) in the system. Moreover, the speed can be suppressed by making the refractory effect strong according to the increase of p i . However, the initial increase of p i at a high speed that was observed in the experiment cannot be explained simply by the effect of the refractoriness, even if it were the absolute refractoriness.