Plastic systemic inhibition controls amplitude while allowing phase pattern in a stochastic neural field model

TL;DR

This study shows that plastic inhibitory mechanisms in stochastic neural field models can control amplitude growth while still allowing the emergence of phase synchronization patterns, which may relate to brain oscillation regulation.

Contribution

It introduces and demonstrates the role of plastic systemic inhibition in controlling amplitude and enabling phase patterns in stochastic neural field models.

Findings

Plastic inhibition controls amplitude growth.

Phase patterns emerge with plastic inhibition.

Static inhibition prevents phase pattern formation.

Abstract

Oscillatory phase pattern formation and amplitude control for a linearized stochastic neuron field model was investigated by simulating coupled stochastic processes defined by stochastic differential equations. It was found, for several choices of parameters, that pattern formation in the phases of these processes occurred if and only if the amplitudes were allowed to grow large. Stimulated by recent work on homeostatic inhibitory plasticity, we introduced static and plastic (adaptive) systemic inhibitory mechanisms to keep the amplitudes stochastically bounded in subsequent simulations. The systems with static systemic inhibition exhibited bounded amplitudes but no sustained phase patterns, whereas the systems with plastic systemic inhibition exhibited both bounded amplitudes and sustained phase patterns. These results demonstrate that plastic inhibitory mechanisms in neural field models can stochastically control amplitudes while allowing patterns of phase synchronization to develop. Similar mechanisms of plastic systemic inhibition could play a role in regulating oscillatory functioning in the brain.