The conductance-based refractory density (CBRD) approach is a parsimonious mathematical-computational framework for modeling interact- ing populations of regular spiking neurons, which, however, has not been yet extended for a population of bursting neurons. The canonical CBRD method allows to describe the firing activity of a statistical ensemble of uncoupled Hodgkin-Huxley-like neurons (differentiated by noise) and has demonstrated its validity against experimental data. The present manuscript generalises the CBRD for a population of bursting neurons; however, in this pilot computational study we consider the simplest setting in which each individual neuron is governed by a piecewise linear bursting dynamics. The resulting popula- tion model makes use of slow-fast analysis, which leads to a novel method- ology that combines CBRD with the theory of multiple timescale dynamics. The main prospect is that it opens novel avenues for mathematical explo- rations, as well as, the derivation of more sophisticated population activity from Hodgkin-Huxley-like bursting neurons, which will allow to capture the activity of synchronised bursting activity in hyper-excitable brain states (e.g. onset of epilepsy).Russian Science Foundation grant (project 16-15- 10201)
Spanish grant MINECO-FEDER-UE MTM-2015-71509-C2-2-R
Catalan Grant number 2017SGR104
