FitzHugh–Nagumo Neuron Model

Abstract —A complete derivation of neuron model is presented, starting with the description of the fundamental biological mechanisms involved in the living neural cell, followed by the mathematical model formulation extracted from these mechanisms, and a circuit theory technique to obtain a physical IC suitable circuit that emulates the derived mathematical equations culminating with the presentation of the experimental results of a chip fabricated in a 2-pm double-metal, double-poly CMOS process. It is emphasized that the FitzHugh-Nagumo model is very adequate for emulation of small biological systems. A reduced complexity oscillatory model suitable for implementation of relatively large neural network architectures is also introduced with several corresponding CMOS realizations and measured results. I