Optimal Excitatory and Inhibitory Balance for High Learning Performance in Spiking Neural Networks with Long-Tailed Synaptic Weight Distributions

Excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) balance is significantly associated with cognitive function. Its imbalance impairs cognitive function, particularly in patients with psychiatric disorders. Recent physiological and modeling findings show that excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) have a long-tailed distribution and contribute to the generation of spontaneous activity. Moreover, this spontaneous activity and its response to the external stimulus significantly alternate under the different E/I balance. However, the effects of the E/I balance under long-tailed EPSPs at the functional level remain unknown. Hence, to elucidate this relationship, we constructed a reservoir computing (RC) model generating the long-tailed distribution of EPSPs and investigated the effect of the E/I balance on the learning performance of RC in the memory capacity (MC) task, which measures how correctly delayed input signals can be reproduced. The results revealed that an appropriate E/I balance maximized the MC. This high MC was realized by recurrent spike propagation under long-tailed EPSPs. These findings contribute to the understanding of the effect of the E/I balance in physiologically relevant neural networks.