Enhancement of Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity in Spiking Neural Systems with Noise.

Synaptic plasticity is widely recognized to support adaptable information processing in the brain. Spike-timing-dependent plasticity, one subtype of plasticity, can lead to synchronous spike propagation with temporal spiking coding information. Recently, it was reported that in a noisy environment, like the actual brain, the spike-timing-dependent plasticity may be made efficient by the effect of stochastic resonance. In the stochastic resonance, the presence of noise helps a nonlinear system in amplifying a weak (under barrier) signal. However, previous studies have ignored the full variety of spiking patterns and many relevant factors in neural dynamics. Thus, in order to prove the physiological possibility for the enhancement of spike-timing-dependent plasticity by stochastic resonance, it is necessary to demonstrate that this stochastic resonance arises in realistic cortical neural systems. In this study, we evaluate this stochastic resonance phenomenon in the realistic cortical neural system described by the Izhikevich neuron model and compare the characteristics of typical spiking patterns of regular spiking, intrinsically bursting and chattering experimentally observed in the cortex.