An excitable electronic circuit as a sensory neuron model

An electronic circuit device, inspired on the FitzHughNagumo model of neuronal excitability, was constructed and shown to operate with characteristics compatible with those of biological sensory neurons. The nonlinear dynamical model of the electronics quantitatively reproduces the experimental observations on the circuit, including the Hopf bifurcation at the onset of tonic spiking. Moreover, we have implemented an analog noise generator as a source to study the variability of the spike trains. When the circuit is in the excitable regime, coherence resonance is observed. At sufficiently low noise intensity the spike trains have Poisson statistics, as in many biological neurons. The transfer function of the stochastic spike trains has a dynamic range of 6 dB, close to experimental values for real olfactory receptor neurons. © 2012 World Scientific Publishing Company.Fil: Medeiros, Bruno N. S.. Universidade Federal de Pernambuco; BrasilFil: Minces, Victor. University of California at San Diego; Estados UnidosFil: Mindlin, Bernardo Gabriel. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Copelli, Mauro. Universidade Federal de Pernambuco; BrasilFil: Leite, José R. Rios. Universidade Federal de Pernambuco; Brasi