The neural communication network: A brief review on neuromodeling and neuroengineering

Biological neural communication network continuously gathers information about the internal state of the organism and its external environment, processes and evaluates this information to eventually coordinate activities of “end devices”, e.g., muscle cells. All activities, i.e., voluntary and involuntary actions of the body, the causes of mental disorders, and any other function or dysfunction of the brain are conditioned on the imposing performance of the neural network that cannot be understood without the knowledge about the process of communication between neurons - the so-called neuro-spike communication. Due to their performances, biological neurons and neural communication network are increasingly involved by the ICT-community to inspire novel neural-like electronic devices and nano-networks that would perform advanced sensing, actuation or stimulation at nano-scale. This paper is intended to review accumulated inter-disciplinary studies and knowledge on the neuro-spike communication and investigate their potential and limitations. The review is conceptualized around the neuromodeling efforts from computational neuroscience and communication and information technology, and neuroengineering efforts from communication technology and electronics.