Enhance sensitivity to illumination and synchronization in light-dependent neurons*

Abstract

When a phototube is activated to connect a neural circuit, the output voltage becomes sensitive to external illumination because the photocurrent across the phototube can be controlled by external electromagnetic wave. The channel currents from different branch circuits have different impacts on the outputs voltage of the neural circuit. In this paper, a phototube is incorporated into different branch circuits in a simple neural circuit, and then a light-controlled neuron is obtained for further nonlinear analysis. Indeed, the phototube is considered as exciting source when it is activated by external illumination, and two kinds of light-sensitive neurons are obtained when the phototube is connected to capacitor or induction coil, respectively. Electric synapse coupling is applied to detect possible synchronization between two functional neurons, and the energy consumption along the coupling channel via resistor is estimated. The analog circuits for the two kinds of light-sensitive neurons are supplied for further confirmation by using Multisim. It is found that two light-sensitive neurons and neural circuits can be synchronized by taming the coupling intensity carefully. It provides possible clues to understand the synchronization mechanism for eyes and artificial sensors which are sensitive to illumination. Finally, a section for open problems is supplied for further investigation about its collective behaviors in the network with/without synapse coupling.