Inhibition as binding controller at the single neuron level

Natural stimulus for a neuron is a sum of large number of unitary excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSP) slightly dispersed in time. We analyze, based on numerical solution of the Hodgkin and Huxley equations, how does the triggering ability of the compound stimulus depend on the relative timing of the EPSPs it comprises. The dependences found suggest that a neuron stimulated from many synaptic inputs can be treated as performing elementary binding function and that inhibition serves as a controller of that kind of binding. The transient process characterized by EPSP operates in this context as a short-term memory mechanism inherent to a single neuron.