Study of neuronal gain in a conductance-based leaky integrate-and-fire neuron model with balanced excitatory and inhibitory synaptic input

Abstract

Neurons receive a continual stream of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs. A conductance-based neuron model is used to investigate how the balanced component of this input modulates the amplitude of neuronal responses. The output spiking rate is well described by a formula involving three parameters: the mean μ and variance σ of the membrane potential and the effective membrane time constant τQ. This expression shows that, for sufficiently small τQ, the level of balanced excitatory-inhibitory input has a nonlinear modulatory effect on the neuronal gain.