Balanced neurons: Analysis of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons with reversal potentials

Abstract

A new technique is presented for analyzing leaky integrate-and-fire neurons that incorporates reversal potentials, which impose a biologically realistic lower bound to the membrane potential. The time distribution of the synaptic inputs is modeled as a Poisson process. The analysis is carried out in the Gaussian approximation, which comparison with numerical simulations confirms is most accurate in the limit of a large number of inputs. The hypothesis that the observed variability in the spike times of cortical neurons is caused by a balance of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs is supported by the results for the coefficient of variation of the interspike intervals. Its value decreas..