A new nonlinear mechanism to dynamically balance excitation and inhibition

Authors: Antonio Politi, Alessandro Torcini

Presentation type: Poster at SNUFA 2024 online workshop (5-6 Nov 2024)

Abstract

Neurons in the cortex fire irregularly and with a low firing rate despite being subject to a continuous stimulation (bombardment) from thousands of pre-synaptic neurons. This seemingly counter-intuitive evolution has been explained in terms of the theory of dynamical balance of excitation and inhibition [1] considered as one of the major contributions of theoretical physics to neuroscience. However, this theory has been recently criticized, because it requires un-physically large external currents, experimentally unjustified. Here, we propose a nonlinear balancing mechanism based on a biologically plausible form of synaptic plasticity (short-term depression) which works also with weak external current [1] C. van Vreeswijk and H. Sompolinsky, Science 274, 1724 (1996).