Effect of Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity on Stochastic Burst Synchronization in A Scale-Free Neuronal Network

Abstract: We consider an excitatory population of subthreshold Izhikevich neurons which cannot fire spontaneously without noise. As the coupling strength passes a threshold, individual neurons exhibit noise-induced burstings. This neuronal population has adaptive dynamic synaptic strengths governed by the spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). In the absence of STDP, stochastic burst synchronization (SBS) between noise-induced burstings of subthreshold neurons was previously found to occur over a large range of intermediate noise intensities. Here, we study the effect of additive STDP on the SBS by varying the noise intensity $D$ in the Barab\'asi-Albert scale-free network (SFN) for the case of symmetric preferential attachment. This type of SFN exhibits a power-law degree distribution, and hence it becomes an inhomogeneous one with a few "hubs" (i.e., super-connected nodes). Occurrence of a "Matthew" effect in synaptic plasticity is found to occur due to a positive feedback process. Good burst synchronization gets better via long-term potentiation (LTP) of synaptic strengths, while bad burst synchronization gets worse via long-term depression (LTD). Consequently, a step-like rapid transition to SBS occurs by changing $D$, in contrast to a relatively smooth transition in the absence of STDP. In the presence of additive STDP, we also investigate the effects of network architecture on the SBS for a fixed $D$. Emergences of LTP and LTD of synaptic strengths are investigated in details via microscopic studies based on both the distributions of time delays between the burst onset times of the pre- and the post-synaptic neurons and the pair-correlations between the pre- and the post-synaptic IIBRs (instantaneous individual burst rates). Finally, a multiplicative STDP case (depending on states) is also investigated in comparison with the additive STDP case (independent of states).