Abstract
Gamma rhythms play a major role in many different processes in the brain, such as attention, working memory, and sensory processing. While typically considered detrimental, counterintuitively noise can sometimes have beneficial effects on communication and information transfer. Recently, Meng and Riecke showed that synchronization of interacting networks of inhibitory neurons in the gamma band (i.e., gamma generated through an ING mechanism) increases while synchronization within these networks decreases when neurons are subject to uncorrelated noise. However, experimental and modeling studies point towardz an important role of the pyramidal-interneuronal network gamma (PING) mechanism in the cortex. Therefore, we investigated the effect of uncorrelated noise on the communication between excitatory-inhibitory networks producing gamma oscillations via a PING mechanism. Our results suggest that, at least in a certain range of noise strengths and natural frequency differences between the regions, synaptic noise can have a supporting role in facilitating inter-regional communication, similar to the ING case for a slightly larger parameter range. Furthermore, the noise-induced synchronization between networks is generated via a different mechanism than when synchronization is mediated by strong synaptic coupling. Noise-induced synchronization is achieved by lowering synchronization within networks which allows the respective other network to impose its own gamma rhythm resulting in synchronization between networks.
Highlights
Synchronous oscillatory activity in high and low frequency ranges has been proposed to underlie coordinated communication between distributed neural systems (Singer, 1999; Buzsáki and Draguhn, 2004; Buzsáki, 2006; Fries, 2009)
We explored the role of uncorrelated noise in the synchronization of interacting gamma rhythms
We confirmed prior results from Meng and Riecke (2018) on interneuron network gamma (ING) rhythms and extended their findings to gamma oscillations produced by the pyramidal-interneuron network gamma (PING) mechanism
Summary
Synchronous oscillatory activity in high and low frequency ranges has been proposed to underlie coordinated communication between distributed neural systems (Singer, 1999; Buzsáki and Draguhn, 2004; Buzsáki, 2006; Fries, 2009). Gamma rhythms (high-frequency oscillations in the 30–90 Hz range) have been studied extensively and have been related to perception (Gray et al, 1989), attention (Fries et al, 2001), memory (Tallon-Baudry et al, 1998), consciousness (Melloni et al, 2007), and synaptic plasticity (Wespatat et al, 2004). The ING mechanism is based on the mutual inhibition of inhibitory neurons, which act as a gate that temporarily suppresses firing until inhibition wears off and the neurons fire in increased synchrony (Buzsáki and Wang, 2012). Firing of excitatory neurons prompts firing of inhibitory neurons which in turn temporarily suppress further firing, leading to coherent activity in both groups
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