Reciprocal projections in hierarchically organized evolvable neural circuits affect EEG-like signals

Modular architecture is a hallmark of many brain circuits. In the cerebral cortex, in particular, it has been observed that reciprocal connections are often present between functionally interconnected areas that are hierarchically organized. We investigate the effect of reciprocal connections in a network of modules of simulated spiking neurons. The neural activity is recorded by means of virtual electrodes and EEG-like signals, called electrochipograms (EChG), analyzed by time- and frequency-domain methods. A major feature of our approach is the implementation of important bio-inspired processes that affect the connectivity within a neural module: synaptogenesis, cell death, spike-timing-dependent plasticity and synaptic pruning. These bio-inspired processes drive the build-up of auto-associative links within each module, which generate an areal activity, recorded by EChG, that reflect the changes in the corresponding functional connectivity within and between neuronal modules. We found that circuits with intra-layer reciprocal projections exhibited enhanced stimulus-locked response. We show evidence that all networks of modules are able to process and maintain patterns of activity associated with the stimulus after its offset. The presence of feedback and horizontal projections was necessary to evoke cross-layer coherence in bursts of -frequency at regular intervals. These findings bring new insights to the understanding of the relation between the functional organization of neural circuits and the electrophysiological signals generated by large cell assemblies. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled "Neural Coding".