It has recently been discovered that single neuron stimulation can impact
network dynamics in immature and adult neuronal circuits. Here we report a
novel mechanism which can explain in neuronal circuits, at an early stage of
development, the peculiar role played by a few specific neurons in
promoting/arresting the population activity. For this purpose, we consider a
standard neuronal network model, with short-term synaptic plasticity, whose
population activity is characterized by bursting behavior. The addition of
developmentally inspired constraints and correlations in the distribution of
the neuronal connectivities and excitabilities leads to the emergence of
functional hub neurons, whose stimulation/deletion is critical for the network
activity. Functional hubs form a clique, where a precise sequential activation
of the neurons is essential to ignite collective events without any need for a
specific topological architecture. Unsupervised time-lagged firings of
supra-threshold cells, in connection with coordinated entrainments of
near-threshold neurons, are the key ingredients to orchestrateComment: 39 pages, 15 figures, to appear in PLOS Computational Biolog
