https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2018-00079-7
Regular Article
Collective irregular dynamics in balanced networks of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons
1
Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology and Department of Physics (SUPA), Old Aberdeen,
Aberdeen
AB24 3UE, UK
2
Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modélisation, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, CNRS, UMR 8089,
95302
Cergy-Pontoise cedex, France
3
CNR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, via Madonna del Piano 10,
50019
Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
a e-mail: e.ullner@abdn.ac.uk
Received:
29
April
2018
Received in final form:
17
June
2018
Published online: 12 December 2018
We extensively explore networks of weakly unbalanced, leaky integrate-and-fire (LIF) neurons for different coupling strength, connectivity, and by varying the degree of refractoriness, as well as the delay in the spike transmission. We find that the neural network does not only exhibit a microscopic (single-neuron) stochastic-like evolution, but also a collective irregular dynamics (CID). Our analysis is based on the computation of a suitable order parameter, typically used to characterize synchronization phenomena and on a detailed scaling analysis (i.e. simulations of different network sizes). As a result, we can conclude that CID is a true thermodynamic phase, intrinsically different from the standard asynchronous regime.
© The Author(s) 2018
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
