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Functional consequences of correlated excitatory and inhibitory conductances in cortical networks

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Abstract

Neurons in the neocortex receive a large number of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs. Excitation and inhibition dynamically balance each other, with inhibition lagging excitation by only few milliseconds. To characterize the functional consequences of such correlated excitation and inhibition, we studied models in which this correlation structure is induced by feedforward inhibition (FFI). Simple circuits show that an effective FFI changes the integrative behavior of neurons such that only synchronous inputs can elicit spikes, causing the responses to be sparse and precise. Further, effective FFI increases the selectivity for propagation of synchrony through a feedforward network, thereby increasing the stability to background activity. Last, we show that recurrent random networks with effective inhibition are more likely to exhibit dynamical network activity states as have been observed in vivo. Thus, when a feedforward signal path is embedded in such recurrent network, the stabilizing effect of effective inhibition creates an suitable substrate for signal propagation. In conclusion, correlated excitation and inhibition support the notion that synchronous spiking may be important for cortical processing.

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Acknowledgements

For helpful discussions we thank Yves Fregnac and Arvind Kumar, the latter also for his careful reading of the manuscript. We thank the reviewers for helpful suggestions. This work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF grant 01GQ0420 to BCCN Freiburg), by the German Research Council (DFG SFB-780), by the CNRS and the 6th RFP of the EU (grant no. 15879-FACETS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives de la Méditerranée, UMR6193 CNRS—Aix-Marseille Université, 31 chemin Joseph Aiguier, 13402, Marseille Cedex 20, France

    Jens Kremkow, Laurent U. Perrinet & Guillaume S. Masson

  2. Neurobiology and Biophysics, Faculty of Biology, Albert-Ludwig University, Schänzlestrasse 1, 79104, Freiburg, Germany

    Jens Kremkow & Ad Aertsen

  3. Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Hansastrasse 9A, 79104, Freiburg, Germany

    Jens Kremkow & Ad Aertsen

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  1. Jens Kremkow
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  2. Laurent U. Perrinet
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Correspondence to Jens Kremkow.

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Kremkow, J., Perrinet, L.U., Masson, G.S. et al. Functional consequences of correlated excitatory and inhibitory conductances in cortical networks. J Comput Neurosci 28, 579–594 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-010-0240-9

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