An Integrated Astrocyte-Adaptive Exponential (AAdEx) Neuron And Circuit Implementation

Reconstruction and implementation of biological models of the brain cells can help to understand brain information processing algorithms through system-level modeling of cellular networks, study the mechanisms underlying neurological and psychiatric disease, simulate drug treatment, designing brain computer interfaces and many useful applications. The simulations of brain require qualitative models describing its components and how they interact with each other. Most of previous effort only consider neurons as active component in processing of information in the brain, but it has proven that the glial cells unlike former belief, are involved in the many brain function. This paper couples an accurate, simple and versatile AdEx neuron model with a concise astrocyte model and investigate their mutual effect pathways. The simulation result of integrated models, reveals the significant effect of the astrocyte on the post-synaptic neuron activation or inactivation. In the last section a circuit for implementation of the silicon astrocyte is presented that can be used alongside with available AdEx neuron circuits for the realization of the astrocyte integrated AdEX neuron (AAdEx).