Constraints on the synchronization of entorhinal cortex stellate cells

Synchronized oscillations of large numbers of central neurons are believed to be important for a wide variety of cognitive functions, including long-term memory recall and spatial navigation. It is therefore plausible that evolution has optimized the biophysical properties of central neurons in some way for synchronized oscillations to occur. Here, we use computational models to investigate the relationships between the presumably genetically determined parameters of stellate cells in layer II of the entorhinal cortex and the ability of coupled populations of these cells to synchronize their intrinsic oscillations: in particular, we calculate the time it takes circuits of two or three cells with initially randomly distributed phases to synchronize their oscillations to within one action potential width, and the metabolic energy they consume in doing so. For recurrent circuit topologies, we find that parameters giving low intrinsic firing frequencies close to those actually observed are strongly advantageous for both synchronization time and metabolic energy consumption.