Heteroclinic cycles in Hopfield networks

Participants : Pascal Chossat, Martin Krupa.

Learning or memory formation are associated with the strengthening of the synaptic connections between neurons according to a pattern reflected by the input. According to this theory a retained memory sequence is associated to a dynamic pattern of the associated neural circuit. In this work we consider a class of network neuron models, known as Hopfield networks, with a learning rule which consists of transforming an information string to a coupling pattern. Within this class of models we study dynamic patterns, known as robust heteroclinic cycles, and establish a tight connection between their existence and the structure of the coupling.

This work is available as and has been submitted to a Journal.

Periodic forcing of stabilized E-I networks: Nonlinear resonance curves and dynamics

Participants : Romain Veltz, Terry Sejnowski [Salk Institute] .

Inhibition stabilized networks (ISNs) are neural architectures with strong positive feedback among pyramidal neurons balanced by strong negative feedback from in-hibitory interneurons, a circuit element found in the hippocampus and the primary visual cortex. In their working regime, ISNs produce damped oscillations in the γ-range in response to inputs to the inhibitory population. In order to understand the proper-ties of interconnected ISNs, we investigated periodic forcing of ISNs. We show that ISNs can be excited over a range of frequencies and derive properties of the resonance peaks. In particular, we studied the phase-locked solutions, the torus solutions and the resonance peaks. More particular, periodically forced ISNs respond with (possibly multi-stable) phase-locked activity whereas networks with sustained intrinsic oscilla-tions respond more dynamically to periodic inputs with tori. Hence, the dynamics are surprisingly rich and phase effects alone do not adequately describe the network re-sponse. This strengthens the importance of phase-amplitude coupling as opposed to phase-phase coupling in providing multiple frequencies for multiplexing and routing information.