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Updated: Aug 17, 2026

Real-time Electrophysiology: Using Closed-loop Protocols to Probe Neuronal Dynamics and Beyond
Published on: June 24, 2015
Adaptive exponential integrate-and-fire model as an effective description of neuronal activity
Romain Brette1, Wulfram Gerstner
1Dept. d'Informatique, Equipe Odyssée, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 45 rue d'Ulm, 75230 Paris Cedex 05, France. brette@di.ens.fr
Abstract:
We introduce a two-dimensional integrate-and-fire model that combines an exponential spike mechanism with an adaptation equation, based on recent theoretical findings. We describe a systematic method to estimate its parameters with simple electrophysiological protocols (current-clamp injection of pulses and ramps) and apply it to a detailed conductance-based model of a regular spiking neuron. Our simple model predicts correctly the timing of 96% of the spikes (+/-2 ms) of the detailed model in response to injection of noisy synaptic conductances. The model is especially reliable in high-conductance states, typical of cortical activity in vivo, in which intrinsic conductances were found to have a reduced role in shaping spike trains. These results are promising because this simple model has enough expressive power to reproduce qualitatively several electrophysiological classes described in vitro.
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