A network of coincidence detector neurons with periodic and chaotic dynamics

We propose a simple neural network model to understand the dynamics of temporal pulse coding. The model is composed of coincidence-detector neurons with uniform synaptic efficacies and random pulse propagation delays. We also assume a global negative feedback mechanism which controls the network activity, leading to a fixed number of neurons firing within a certain time window. Due to this constraint, the network state becomes well defined and the dynamics equivalent to a piecewise nonlinear map. Numerical simulations of the model indicate that the latency of neuronal firing is crucial to the global network dynamics; when the timing of postsynaptic firing is less sensitive to perturbations in timing of presynaptic spikes, the network dynamics become stable and periodic, whereas increased sensitivity leads to instability and chaotic dynamics. Furthermore, we introduce a learning rule which decreases the Lyapunov exponent of an attractor and enlarges the basin of attraction.