Definition
Synaptic connectivity refers to the ensemble of direct chemical and electrical connections between neurons. In chemical synapses afferent presynaptic neuroelectric activity is mediated via neurotransmitters to the postsynaptic terminal, at which the postsynaptic activity can be either increased or decreased as a function of the excitatory/inhibitory character of the synapse. In electrical synapses the presynaptic and postsynaptic cell membranes are connected by special channels called gap junctions that are capable of directly passing electrical current between neurons. In neural population models the various aspects of synaptic connectivity are absorbed, typically through mean field techniques, by connectivity functions, parameters, and/or nonlinear response functions.
Detailed Description
A synapse is a connecting structure that permits a (presynaptic) neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another (postsynaptic) neuron. There are hence two fundamentally...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Abbott LF, Nelson SB (2000) Synaptic plasticity: taming the beast. Nat Neurosci 3(Suppl):1178–1183
Amari S (1977) Dynamics of pattern formation in lateral-inhibition type neural fields. Biol Cybern 27:77–87
Brunel N, Wang X-J (2003) What determines the frequency of fast network oscillations with irregular neural discharges? I. synaptic dynamics and excitation-inhibition balance. J Neurophysiol 90:415–430
Destexhe A (1998) Spike-and-wave oscillations based on the properties of GABAB receptors. J Neurosci 18:9099–9111
Destexhe A, Mainen ZF, Sejnowski TJ (1994) An efficient method for computing synaptic conductances based on a kinetic model of receptor binding. Neural Comput 6:14–18
Freeman WJ (1975) Mass action in the nervous system. Academic, New York
Gerstner W, Kistler WM (2002) Spiking neuron models. Single neurons, populations, plasticity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
Hutt A, Atay FM (2005) Analysis of nonlocal neural fields for both general and gamma-distributed connectivities. Physica D 203(1–2):30–54
Jirsa VK, Haken H (1996) Field theory of electromagnetic brain activity. Phys Rev Lett 77:960–963
Nunez PL (1974) The brain wave equation: a model for EEG. Math Biosci 21:279–297
Robinson PA, Rennie CA, Wright JJ (1997) Propagation and stability of waves of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex. Phys Rev E 56:826–840
Stefanescu R, Jirsa V (2008) A low dimensional description of globally coupled heterogeneous neural networks of excitatory and inhibitory. PLoS Comput Biol 4(11):26–36
Stefanescu R, Jirsa V (2011) Reduced representations of heterogeneous mixed neural networks with synaptic coupling. Phys Rev E Stat Nonlinear Soft Matter Phys 83(2):026204
Wilson HR, Cowan JD (1972) Excitatory and inhibitory interactions in localized populations of model neurons. Biophys J 12:1–24
Wilson HR, Cowan JD (1973) A mathematical theory of the functional dynamics of cortical and thalamic nervous tissue. Kybernetic 13:55–80
Wong KF, Wang XJ (2006) A recurrent network mechanism of time integration in perceptual decisions. J Neurosci 26(4):1314–1328
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Jirsa, V. (2014). Synaptic Connectivity in Neural Population Models. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_78-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_78-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7320-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences