Interactions between spike-timing-dependent plasticity and phase response curve lead to wireless clustering

Abstract

A phase response curve characterizes the signal transduction between neurons in a minimal manner,whereas spike-timing-dependent plasiticity (STDP) characterizes the way to rewire networks in an activity-dependent manner. The present paper demonstrates that these two key properties both related to spikes work synergetically to carve functionally useful circuits in the brain. STDP working on a population of neurons that prefer asynchrony turns out to convert the initial asynchronous firing to clustered firing with synchrony within a cluster. They get synchronized within a cluster despite their preference to asynchrony because STDP selectively disrupts intra-cluster connections, which we call wireless eclustering. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.