Noise-tuned bursting in a Hedgehog burster

Published on July 28, 2022

Imagine you’re in a band and you want to add some extra spice to your music. Well, the same concept applies to neurons! In this study, scientists discovered that noise, like a drummer with a wild beat, can influence the firing patterns of Hedgehog bursters – a type of neuron. They found that by introducing noise to the fast variable of the Hedgehog burster, they could control the number of spikes in bursts through a phenomenon called self-induced stochastic resonance (SISR). Think of it as the noise acting as a conductor who guides the neuron’s activity. By predicting transition points on slow manifolds using a distance matching condition and adjusting the noise strength, the scientists observed an interesting result: the burst behavior followed a staircase-like pattern. It’s like climbing up steps, each representing a different burst pattern, with more coherence within each step and mixed-mode oscillations at the boundaries. Furthermore, they noticed that as the noise increased, there was trapping of the slow variable, with more traps forming. This study highlights how noise can shape neural activity and lays the groundwork for future research exploring the generalizability of these findings in other systems or organisms. Get ready to dive into the details of this intriguing study!

Noise can shape the firing behaviors of neurons. Here, we show that noise acting on the fast variable of the Hedgehog burster can tune the spike counts of bursts via the self-induced stochastic resonance (SISR) phenomenon. Using the distance matching condition, the critical transition positions on the slow manifolds can be predicted and the stochastic periodic orbits for various noise strengths are obtained. The critical transition positions on the slow manifold with non-monotonic potential differences exhibit a staircase-like dependence on the noise strength, which is also revealed by the stepwise change in the period of the stochastic periodic orbit. The noise-tuned bursting is more coherent within each step while displaying mixed-mode oscillations near the boundaries between the steps. When noise is large enough, noise-induced trapping of the slow variable can be observed, where the number of coexisting traps increases with the noise strength. It is argued that the robustness of SISR underlies the generality of the results discovered in this paper.

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