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Lecture

Mean-field Argument: Asynchronous Activity

Description

This lecture delves into the concept of stationary asynchronous activity in neuronal populations, exploring how input to one neuron can predict activity in a large population. The instructor discusses the mean-field argument, emphasizing the balanced state in random networks and the implications of systematic oscillations.

In MOOC

Neuronal Dynamics 2- Computational Neuroscience: Neuronal Dynamics of Cognition

Official source

Related concepts (29)

Neural oscillation

Neural oscillations, or brainwaves, are rhythmic or repetitive patterns of neural activity in the central nervous system. Neural tissue can generate oscillatory activity in many ways, driven either by mechanisms within individual neurons or by interactions between neurons. In individual neurons, oscillations can appear either as oscillations in membrane potential or as rhythmic patterns of action potentials, which then produce oscillatory activation of post-synaptic neurons.

Biological neuron model

Biological neuron models, also known as a spiking neuron models, are mathematical descriptions of the properties of certain cells in the nervous system that generate sharp electrical potentials across their cell membrane, roughly one millisecond in duration, called action potentials or spikes (Fig. 2). Since spikes are transmitted along the axon and synapses from the sending neuron to many other neurons, spiking neurons are considered to be a major information processing unit of the nervous system.

Neuronal ensemble

A neuronal ensemble is a population of nervous system cells (or cultured neurons) involved in a particular neural computation. The concept of neuronal ensemble dates back to the work of Charles Sherrington who described the functioning of the CNS as the system of reflex arcs, each composed of interconnected excitatory and inhibitory neurons. In Sherrington's scheme, α-motoneurons are the final common path of a number of neural circuits of different complexity: motoneurons integrate a large number of inputs and send their final output to muscles.

Neural coding

Neural coding (or neural representation) is a neuroscience field concerned with characterising the hypothetical relationship between the stimulus and the individual or ensemble neuronal responses and the relationship among the electrical activity of the neurons in the ensemble. Based on the theory that sensory and other information is represented in the brain by networks of neurons, it is thought that neurons can encode both digital and analog information.

Neuron

Within a nervous system, a neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network. Neurons communicate with other cells via synapses - specialized connections that commonly use minute amounts of chemical neurotransmitters to pass the electric signal from the presynaptic neuron to the target cell through the synaptic gap. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa.

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