Comment on "Characterization of Subthreshold Voltage Fluctuations in Neuronal Membranes, " by M. Rudolph and A. Destexhe

In two recent papers, Rudolph and Destexhe (Neural Comp. 15, 2577-2618, 2003; Neural Comp. in press, 2005) studied a leaky integrator model (i.e. an RC-circuit) driven by correlated ("colored") Gaussian conductance noise and Gaussian current noise. In the first paper they derived an expression for the stationary probability density of the membrane voltage; in the second paper this expression was modified to cover a larger parameter regime. Here we show by standard analysis of solvable limit cases (white-noise limit of additive and multiplicative noise sources; only slow multiplicative noise; only additive noise) and by numerical simulations that their first result does not hold for the general colored-noise case and uncover the errors made in the derivation of a Fokker-Planck equation for the probability density. Furthermore, we demonstrate analytically (including an exact integral expression for the timedependent mean value of the voltage) and by comparison to simulation re...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: NECO
• Authors: Benjamin Lindner, André Longtin
• Keywords: Multiplicative Noise, NECO 2006, Neural Comp, Probability Density