Stochastic and Coherence Resonance in a Dressed Neuron Model

Abstract

The noise induced stochastic behaviors, in terms of stochastic resonance (SR) and coherence resonance (CR), have been widely reported in many nonlinear systems in different disciplines. In particular, in neuroscience, both the phenomena of SR and CR have been discovered. However, the traditional studies only focus on the dynamical behaviors of the neurons without considering the effects of other biological cells. It is known that neurons are surrounded by a number of glial cells. Being a subgroup of glial cells, astrocytes have been argued to take part in neuronal signal processing. Therefore, it is more reasonable to study the dynamics of a neuron by incorporating the effect of astrocyte, which is termed as dressed neuron. In this paper, the stochastic behaviors of a dressed Hodgkin–Huxley neuron with mutual neuron-astrocyte interaction are studied, and the effects of astrocyte on different resonance mechanisms are analyzed. Simulation results show that the astrocyte plays a similar role as noise in the stochastic behaviors of a neuron, which enhances the performance of a neuron in signal transduction via resonance mechanisms.