Effect of Synaptic Heterogeneity on Neuronal Coordination

PRX Life, vol. 2

Abstract

Recent advancements in measurement techniques have resulted in an increasing amount of data on neural activities recorded in parallel, revealing largely heterogeneous correlation patterns across neurons.Yet, the mechanistic origin of this heterogeneity is largely unknown because existing theoretical approaches linking structure and dynamics in neural circuits are restricted to population-averaged connectivity and activity.Here we present a systematic inclusion of heterogeneity in network connectivity to derive quantitative predictions for neuron-resolved covariances and their statistics in spiking neural networks.Our study shows that the heterogeneity in covariances is not a result of variability in single-neuron firing statistics but stems from the ubiquitously observed sparsity and variability of connections in brain networks.Linear-response theory maps these features to the effective connectivity between neurons, which in turn determines neuronal covariances.Beyond-mean-field tools reveal that synaptic heterogeneity modulates the variability of covariances and thus the complexity of neuronal coordination across many orders of magnitude.

Authors 3

1. Moritz Layer Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University · Forschungszentrum Jülich · Jülich Aachen Research Alliance

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany

   RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

2. Moritz Helias Aachen Department of Physics Faculty 1

   RWTH Aachen University · Forschungszentrum Jülich · Jülich Aachen Research Alliance

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Physics, Faculty 1, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany

3. David Dahmen

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · Jülich Aachen Research Alliance

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany