Effect of Interpopulation Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity on Synchronized Rhythms in Neuronal Networks with Inhibitory and Excitatory Populations

Abstract: We consider clustered small-world networks with both inhibitory (I) and excitatory (E) populations. This I-E neuronal network has adaptive dynamic I to E and E to I interpopulation synaptic strengths, governed by interpopulation spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). In previous works without STDPs, fast sparsely synchronized rhythms, related to diverse cognitive functions, were found to appear in a range of noise intensity $D$ for static synaptic strengths. By varying $D$, we investigate the effect of interpopulation STDPs on diverse population and individual properties of fast sparsely synchronized rhythms that emerge in both the I- and the E-populations. Depending on values of $D$, long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) for population-averaged values of saturated interpopulation synaptic strengths are found to occur, and they make effects on the degree of fast sparse synchronization. In a broad region of intermediate $D$, the degree of good synchronization (with higher spiking measure) becomes decreased, while in a region of large $D$, the degree of bad synchronization (with lower spiking measure) gets increased. Consequently, in each I- or E-population, the synchronization degree becomes nearly the same in a wide range of $D$. This kind of "equalization effect" is found to occur via cooperative interplay between the average occupation and pacing degrees of fast sparsely synchronized rhythms. We note that the equalization effect in interpopulation synaptic plasticity is distinctly in contrast to the Matthew (bipolarization) effect in intrapopulation (I to I and E to E) synaptic plasticity where good (bad) synchronization gets better (worse). Finally, emergences of LTP and LTD of interpopulation synaptic strengths are intensively investigated via a microscopic method based on the distributions of time delays between the pre- and the post-synaptic spike times.