Coding properties of intrinsically bursting neurons are determined by their bifurcation structure

G. MATO AND I. SAMENGO

New Orleans

Congreso; 44th Meeting Society for Neuroscience; 2012

Society for Neuroscience

It is generally assumed that neural systems perform some kind of computation.In order to elucidate what computation is being done we have to understand the relation between environmental stimuli, behavior and neural responses. This is  the coding problem. Typical questions are which features of the response convey  more information about the stimuli, how correlations between  responses affect the transmission of information or what is the capacity of the code to convey information. These questions, that can be addressed using techniques of Information Theory, are not different from what one would ask about any other coding and communication  system (or an input-output black box). Neural systems, on the other hand, have very  specific dynamical properties, that arise from the properties of their ionic channels. The specific nature of information processing in the nervous system is determined by the details of this neural hardware, but given the complexity of these highly non-linear dynamical systems this relationship has not been unraveled in a systematic manner. We address this question using a different approach: we first analyze very simple dynamical  models with the hope that they will reveal aspects of the neural code that cannot be  uncovered using conventional black box approaches. These simplified systems can be linked to more realistic ones using tools of theory of dynamical systems (such as bifurcation  theory). We will show that the temporal neural code of spiking and bursting neurons depends  critically on the mathematical properties of the underlying dynamical system. Moreover, the  analysis reveals which one of the coding strategies bursting neurons can use (among all the possible ones).