A model of neuronal intrinsic plasticity

Abstract

Recent experimental results have accumulated evidence that the neurons can change their response characteristics to adapt to the variations of the synaptic inputs, which is the so-called neuronal intrinsic plasticity mechanism. In this paper, we present a new model on neuronal intrinsic plasticity. We first show that the probability distribution of the neuronal firing rates is more suitable to be represented as a Weibull distribution than an exponential distribution. Then, we derive the intrinsic plasticity model based on information theory. This study provides a more realistic model for further research on the effects of intrinsic plasticity on various brain functions and dynamics. © 2009 IEEE.