Modeling of Synchronized Burst in Dissociated Cortical Tissue: An Exploration of Parameter Space

In vitro neuronal culture is a potentially powerful tool for investigation of information processing of neurons. However, in a mature dissociated neuronal culture, synchronized bursting is often observed. Bursting strongly drives the dynamics of the network, thus making it difficult to investigate the computational properties. A quantitative modeling of the dynamics would provide a means for understanding the processes that produce bursts and a means to manipulate the dynamics to control them. A simulated network composed of leaky integrate and fire neurons and dynamic synapses is used to model the phenomenon. We investigate the variability of burst dynamics according to parameters such as connectivity, recovery time constant, and noise.