Analysis of synfire chains

Abstract

The biological implications of synfire-chain neural networks are explored by studying two idealized models. First a network model with binary firing neurons and parallel updating is proposed. This model can be solved exactly in the thermodynamic limit using the mean-field theory. An explicit equation for the capacity is obtained. In the second model, the synchrony of the pulse of activity along a synfire chain is investigated in the context of simple integrate-and-fire neurons. It is found that under natural assumptions a near-synchronous wave of activity can propagate stably along a synfire chain. The relevance of this result for real systems is discussed.