......................................................................

NJIT Mathematical Biology Seminar

Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 4:00pm
Cullimore Hall 611
New Jersey Institute of Technology

......................................................................

Relating Stochastic Synchrony and Phase-Resetting Curves

Sashi Marella

University of Pittsburgh

Understanding mechanisms of neural synchronization is crucial for investigating broader cortical function. In my talk I will present some of my recent theoretical work on the relationship between the shape of the phase-resetting curve (PRC) and the degree of stochastic synchronization observed between a pair of uncoupled general oscillators receiving partially correlated Poisson inputs. Using perturbation methods, we derive an expression relating the shape of the PRC to the probability density function (PDF) of the phase difference between the oscillators. Using various measures of synchrony and cross-correlation we find that the degree of stochastic synchronization is dependent on the membership of the PRC (Type I or Type II). We apply our theory to the olfactory bulb to investigate whether the correlated output of the olfactory bulb granule cells can synchronize uncoupled mitral cells via a positive feedback loop in correlation. We observe an emergence and temporal evolution of input correlation in recurrent networks with feedback. We also investigate the rate of convergence to the steady-state PDF using an analytical approach. This work explores theoretical models ranging from spiking models to abstract analytically tractable models