A Network Model Reveals That the Experimentally Observed Switch of the Granule Cell Phenotype During Epilepsy Can Maintain the Pattern Separation Function of the Dentate Gyrus

Abstract

The model is a conductance-based neural network model of the brain circuit thought to be involved in pattern separation during hippocampal memory acquisition: the dentate gyrus (DG). In this chapter we explain the concepts of pattern separation and how it was tested in our model. Our hypothesis is that experimentally constrained homeostatic adaptations of intrinsic neuronal properties can restore the pattern separation ability of the DG network, if it was lost during epileptic excitability (Stegen et al. 2009; Young et al. 2009; Yim et al. 2015).