Neuronal Response Impedance Mechanism Implementing Cooperative Networks with Low Firing Rates and Microseconds Precision

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that neurons can achieve microsecond response precision and low firing rates through an intrinsic impedance mechanism, enabling cooperative network behavior without relying on balanced link distributions.

Contribution

It introduces a neuronal response impedance mechanism that fosters cooperation and precise timing in neural networks, independent of link balance or global synchronization.

Findings

Neurons exhibit microsecond response timing at low stimulation frequencies.

Response failures act as a low pass filter, saturating inter-spike intervals.

Network cooperation emerges through intrinsic neuronal properties, not link distributions.

Abstract

Realizations of low firing rates in neural networks usually require globally balanced distributions among excitatory and inhibitory links, while feasibility of temporal coding is limited by neuronal millisecond precision. We show that cooperation, governing global network features, emerges through nodal properties, as opposed to link distributions. Using in vitro and in vivo experiments we demonstrate microsecond precision of neuronal response timings under low stimulation frequencies, whereas moderate frequencies result in a chaotic neuronal phase characterized by degraded precision. Above a critical stimulation frequency, which varies among neurons, response failures were found to emerge stochastically such that the neuron functions as a low pass filter, saturating the average inter-spike-interval. This intrinsic neuronal response impedance mechanism leads to cooperation on a network level, such that firing rates are suppressed towards the lowest neuronal critical frequency simultaneously with neuronal microsecond precision. Our findings open up opportunities of controlling global features of network dynamics through few nodes with extreme properties.