1 research outputs found
A Neural-Astrocytic Network Architecture: Astrocytic calcium waves modulate synchronous neuronal activity
Understanding the role of astrocytes in brain computation is a nascent
challenge, promising immense rewards, in terms of new neurobiological knowledge
that can be translated into artificial intelligence. In our ongoing effort to
identify principles endow-ing the astrocyte with unique functions in brain
computation, and translate them into neural-astrocytic networks (NANs), we
propose a biophysically realistic model of an astrocyte that preserves the
experimentally observed spatial allocation of its distinct subcellular
compartments. We show how our model may encode, and modu-late, the extent of
synchronous neural activity via calcium waves that propagate intracellularly
across the astrocytic compartments. This relationship between neural activity
and astrocytic calcium waves has long been speculated but it is still lacking a
mechanistic explanation. Our model suggests an astrocytic "calcium cascade"
mechanism for neuronal synchronization, which may empower NANs by imposing
periodic neural modulation known to reduce coding errors. By expanding our
notions of information processing in astrocytes, our work aims to solidify a
computational role for non-neuronal cells and incorporate them into artificial
networks.Comment: International Conference on Neuromorphic Systems (ICONS) 201