Suppression of synchronous spiking in two interacting populations of excitatory and inhibitory quadratic integrate-and-fire neurons

Abstract: Collective oscillations and their suppression by external stimulation are analyzed in a large-scale neural network consisting of two interacting populations of excitatory and inhibitory quadratic integrate-and-fire neurons. In the limit of an infinite number of neurons, the microscopic model of this network can be reduced to an exact low-dimensional system of mean-field equations. Bifurcation analysis of these equations reveals three different dynamic modes in a free network: a stable resting state, a stable limit cycle, and bistability with a coexisting resting state and a limit cycle. We show that in the limit cycle mode, high-frequency stimulation of an inhibitory population can stabilize an unstable resting state and effectively suppress collective oscillations. We also show that in the bistable mode, the dynamics of the network can be switched from a stable limit cycle to a stable resting state by applying an inhibitory pulse to the excitatory population. The results obtained from the mean-field equations are confirmed by numerical simulation of the microscopic model.