Effect of the duration of the synaptic activity on a delayed recurrent neuronal loop

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the duration of synaptic activity affects the behavior of a single-neuron recurrent loop with chemical feedback, revealing that synapse time constants significantly influence system predictability and response.

Contribution

It introduces a model analyzing the impact of synaptic deactivation time constants on the dynamics of delayed recurrent neuronal loops, highlighting differences between slow and fast synapses.

Findings

Slow synapses lead to more predictable loop responses.

Fast synapses' effects depend heavily on loop delay.

Comparison with inhibitory and electrical synapses shows distinct behaviors.

Abstract

A recurrent loop consisting of a single neuron is considered which is influenced by a chemical excitatory delayed synaptic feedback. We show the response of the system is dependent to the duration of the activity of the synapse which is determined by the deactivation time constant of the synapse. We show that loops with slow synapses, those which the effect of the synaptic activation remains for time constants comparable to the period of firing, show more predictable results where the effect of the fast synapses is tightly dependent on the loop delay time. The results are compared to those of the loops with inhibitory synapses and also with electrical synapses.