Stimulus-response curves of a neuronal model for noisy subthreshold oscillations and related spike generation

Abstract

We investigate the stimulus-dependent tuning properties of a noisy ionic conductance model for intrinsic subthreshold oscillations in membrane potential and associated spike generation. Upon depolarization by an applied current, the model exhibits subthreshold oscillatory activity with an occasional spike generation when oscillations reach the spike threshold. We consider how the amount of applied current, the noise intensity, variation of maximum conductance values, and scaling to different temperature ranges alter the responses of the model with respect to voltage traces, interspike intervals and their statistics, and the mean spike frequency curves. We demonstrate that subthreshold oscillatory neurons in the presence of noise can sensitively and also selectively be tuned by the stimulus-dependent variation of model parameters.