Gating of signal propagation in spiking neural networks by balanced and correlated excitation and inhibition.

Both ongoing and natural stimulus driven neuronal activity are dominated by transients. Selective gating of these transients is mandatory for proper brain function and may, in fact, form the basis of millisecond-fast decision making and action selection. Here we propose that neuronal networks may exploit timing differences between correlated excitation and inhibition (temporal gating) to control the propagation of spiking activity transients. When combined with excitation-inhibition balance, temporal gating constitutes a powerful mechanism to control the propagation of mixtures of transient and tonic neural activity components.