Nonlinear mechanism of excitatory autapse-induced reduction or enhancement of firing frequency of neuronal bursting

Abstract

Excitatory and inhibitory effect always induces the enhancement and inhibitory effect of neural electronic activities, which is the common viewpoint of the modulations to the neural firing and plays important roles in the information processing of the nervous system. In the present paper, the Homoclinic/Homoclinic bursting pattern with alternation behavior between burst containing multiple spikes and subthreshold oscillations and the tough value of the burst lower than that of the subthreshold oscillations is chosen as representative, and the excitatory effect on the complex nonlinear dynamics of the representative bursting pattern is studied. For the excitatory autapse with suitable autaptic time delay and strength, the autaptic current pulse applied to the trough of the burst can induce the number of spikes within a burst to decrease and then the average firing frequency to decline, which presents a novel example different from the common viewpoint of the excitatory effect. The excitatory autapse induces the average firing frequency to increase in the remained parameter region of two-parameter plane of the autaptic time delay and strength. With bifurcations acquired by the fast/slow variable dissection method and phase trajectory, the subthreshold oscillations of the bursting correspond to a subthreshold limit cycle of the fast subsystem and the spike within burst corresponds to a suprathreshold limit cycle, and excitatory autaptic current can induce the transition from suprathreshold limit cycle to subthreshold limit cycle, which leads the spike to terminate in advance and is the cause for reducing the average firing frequency. The results is the present paper are compared with the phenomenon and bifurcation mechanism that the excitatory autapse can induce the spike number to decrease within a burst but the average firing frequency to increase as indicated in a recent study on the Fold/Homoclinic bursting. These results enrich the uncommon phenomenon of the neuronal electrical activities, reveal the underlying nonlinear mechanism, provide a new way to regulate the bursting pattern, and disclose the potential functions of the excitatory autapse.