The Effects of Background Noise on a Biophysical Model of Olfactory Bulb Mitral Cells

• Published in: Bulletin of mathematical biology Vol. 84; no. 10; p. 107
• Main Authors: Craft, Michelle, Ly, Cheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.10.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Background noise; Calcium currents; Calcium signalling; Cell Biology; Data processing; Dynamics; Firing pattern; Firing rate; Information processing; Life Sciences; Mathematical and Computational Biology; Mathematics; Mathematics and Statistics; Mitral cells; Neural coding; Noise; Olfactory bulb; Olfactory pathways; Original Article; Probability density functions; Sensory integration; Smell; Spiking; White noise; White noise; Olfactory bulb; Interspike interval; Fokker-Planck; Mitral cell
• ISSN: 0092-8240; 1522-9602; 1522-9602
• DOI: 10.1007/s11538-022-01066-8

The spiking activity of mitral cells (MC) in the olfactory bulb is a key attribute in olfactory sensory information processing to downstream cortical areas. A more detailed understanding of the modulation of MC spike statistics could shed light on mechanistic studies of olfactory bulb circuits and olfactory coding. We study the spike response of a recently developed single-compartment biophysical MC model containing seven known ionic currents and calcium dynamics subject to constant current input with background white noise. We observe rich spiking dynamics even with constant current input, including multimodal peaks in the interspike interval distribution (ISI) . Although weak-to-moderate background noise for a fixed current input does not change the firing rate much, the spike dynamics can change dramatically, exhibiting non-monotonic spike variability not commonly observed in standard neuron models. We explain these dynamics with a phenomenological model of the ISI probability density function. Our study clarifies some of the complexities of MC spiking dynamics.