Increasing Inhibitory Input Increases Neuronal Firing Rate: Why And When?
Increasing inhibitory input to single neuronal models, such as the FitzHughNagumo model and the Hodgkin-Huxley model, can sometimes increase their firing rates, a phenomenon which we termed as inhibition–boosted firing (IBF). Here we consider neuronal models with di#usion approximation inputs, i.e. they share the identical first and second order statistics of the corresponding Poisson process inputs. Using the integrate-and-fire model and IF-FHN model, we explore theoretically how and when IBF can happen. For both models, it is shown that there is a critical input frequency at which the e#erent firing rate is identical when the neuron receives purely excitatory inputs or exactly balanced inhibitory and excitatory inputs. When the input frequency is lower than the critical frequency, IBF occurs. # COGS, Sussex University, BN1 9QH, UK; E-mail: jf218@cam.ac.uk URL: http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/ jf218 + Department of Mathematics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China; E-mail: gwei@ma
