IUBio

synchronization without oscillations

Darragh Smyth smyth at zorro
Wed Jul 26 04:39:59 EST 1995


Dario Ringach writes:

> Synfire chains synchronize without oscillations... 
> 
> Similarly, data driven asychronous digital system can show 
> similar behavior without a global clock.
> 
I know some of this stuff and the work by Abeles but those models are
data driven, in other words synchronization occurs because the
inputs are synchronized. If I have this understanding wrong please
correct me. In synfire chains there are no lateral interactions between
cells. Conceptually its a feedforward process (even in recurrent nets)
while the oscillation models that I am querying use lateral, horizontal
interactions to synch. I should have phrased my question better and
referred to synch using lateral connections. The biology performed by
the groups of Singer, Konig, Eckhorn and others have shown that the 
synch they get in visual cortex is *NOT* driven by input synchrony
and therefore is not really equivalent to synfire chains. I have thought
about it though and maybe its worth exploring further. I have seen lit that 
refers to dynamics in the olfactory bulb that to me seem very comparable to
synfire chains  (Laurent and Davidowitz (1994) Science 265:1872-5). I have
been wondering if it might carry over to visual cortex even though the
architectures are so different.

Ok thanks for resparking my interest in that. Any other callers?

Darragh
--
Darragh Smyth                smyth at informatik.uni-leipzig.de
Institut fur Informatik,     http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~smyth/
Universitat Leipzig,         voice : +49-341-97-32242 
Pf. 920, Leipzig 04009,      fax   : +49-341-97-32209
Germany.

``Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron or a lunatic.
  A normal person is just a reasonable mix of the these components.''
  (Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum)
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