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NJIT Mathematical Biology Seminar

Tuesday, November 4, 2008, 4:00pm
Cullimore Hall 611
New Jersey Institute of Technology

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Chaotic Dynamics in Balanced Neural Networks

Michael Kreissl

Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization, Goettingen, Germany

Cortical neurons embedded in operational cerebral networks fire their action potentials in irregular, seemingly random sequences. This irregularity is thought to arise from high synaptic input fluctuations, which are the result of a balance between excitation and inhibition -- the balanced state. The actual network dynamics of the balanced state have been discussed controversially and in this talk I want to clarify this controversy and show that the balanced state is chaotic. The chaotic nature of the balanced state implies that networks of neurons in that ground state must use rate coding, since the information loss per spike is too high for temporal or spike coding.