Guiding synchrony through random networks

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that nonlinear dendritic interactions in random neural networks can naturally facilitate guided synchrony propagation, even with only mildly enhanced sub-structures, aligning with biological observations.

Contribution

It reveals how nonlinear dendritic interactions enable synchrony guidance in random networks without requiring pronounced feed-forward structures.

Findings

Nonlinear dendritic interactions promote synchrony propagation.

Guided synchrony occurs in biologically plausible random networks.

Mildly enhanced sub-structures suffice for synchrony guidance.

Abstract

Sparse random networks contain structures that can be considered as diluted feed-forward networks. Modeling of cortical circuits has shown that feed-forward structures, if strongly pronounced compared to the embedding random network, enable reliable signal transmission by propagating localized (sub-network) synchrony. This assumed prominence, however, is not experimentally observed in local cortical circuits. Here we show that nonlinear dendritic interactions as discovered in recent single neuron experiments, naturally enable guided synchrony propagation already in random recurrent neural networks exhibiting mildly enhanced, biologically plausible sub-structures.