Inhibitory-stabilization is sufficient for history-dependent computation in a randomly connected attractor network

For effective information processing, the response to a sensory stimulus should depend on both the incoming stimulus and the history of prior stimuli. Existing models of neural circuits based on multiple attractor states produced with strong self-excitation can exhibit these properties, but they do not stabilize at biologically realistic firing rates. We demonstrate how a randomly connected inhibition-stabilized attractor network can preserve the computational abilities of recurrent excitatory networks, while stabilizing at arbitrarily low firing rates. Not only does excitatory-inhibitory balance stabilize network activity, inhibitory-stabilization also plays a functional role in history-dependent computation: transient oscillations made possible by inhibitory feedback are sufficient for state-dependent responses to stimulation. Such networks may underlie many cognitive tasks, suggesting a functional role for inhibition-stabilized dynamics in cortical computation.