PROJECT HALTED

A Central Pattern Generator is a network of neurons responsible of generate periodic structures of neural activity in whatever of its different forms.

The simplest form is called half-center oscillator [1], two neurons coupled with inhibitory synapses and an constant input current, something like the next figure:

After asking Gonzalo G. de Polavieja about how to build a biologically plausible CPG I have built from scratch my own using the model developed by Izhikevich which uses only ~6 floating point operations per simulation step.

Now I use two neurons, exhibiting rebound spiking, reciprocally inhibited with a initial hyperpolarizing current of -15 nA for 6 ms, which can be seen in green on the top of the first plot.

CPG with two type II neurons

Now the simulation looks quite much real. The states of the CPG are as follow:

  1. Neuron A receives an external stimuli and start firing after the inhibitory input vanishes.
  2. Neuron A inhibits Neuron B for ~9 ms
  3. When Neuron A stops inhibiting B this is triggered and fires.
  4. Neuron B inhibits A
  5. Go back to state 1