Joseph Gerard Makin and Alessandro Abate

EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2007-16

January 16, 2007

http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2007/EECS-2007-16.pdf

The basal ganglia are a set of functionally related and structurally interconnected nuclei in the human brain which form part of a closed loop between cortex and thalamus, receiving input from the former and outputting to the latter. The BG have been implicated in motor control and cognitive switching tasks; in particular, it is believed that the BG function as a controller for motor tasks by selectively disinhibiting appropriate portions of the thalamus and hence activating, via a feedback loop, cortical regions. These switching behaviors are perforce discrete, whereas the underlying dynamics of neuron voltages and neurotransmitter levels are continuous-time, continuous-state phenomena. To this end, we propose and simulate a hybrid automaton for modeling individual neurons that affords explicit representation of voltage discharges and discrete outputs along with continuous voltage dynamics within a single, elegant model; and which is amenable both to the construction of large networks---in particular the cortico-basalthalamic loops---and to analysis on such networks.

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BibTeX citation:

@techreport{Makin:EECS-2007-16,
    Author= {Makin, Joseph Gerard and Abate, Alessandro},
    Title= {A Neural Hybrid-System Model of the Basal Ganglia},
    Year= {2007},
    Month= {Jan},
    Url= {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2007/EECS-2007-16.html},
    Number= {UCB/EECS-2007-16},
    Abstract= {The basal ganglia are a set of functionally related and structurally interconnected nuclei in the human brain which form part of a closed loop between cortex and thalamus, receiving input from the former and outputting to the latter. The BG have been implicated in motor control and cognitive switching tasks; in particular, it is believed that the BG function as a controller for motor tasks by selectively disinhibiting appropriate portions of the thalamus and hence activating, via a feedback loop, cortical regions. These switching behaviors are perforce discrete, whereas the underlying dynamics of neuron voltages and neurotransmitter levels are continuous-time, continuous-state phenomena. To this end, we propose and simulate a hybrid automaton for modeling individual neurons that affords explicit representation of voltage discharges and discrete outputs along with continuous voltage dynamics within a single, elegant model; and which is amenable both to the construction of large networks---in particular the cortico-basalthalamic loops---and to analysis on such networks.},
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Report
%A Makin, Joseph Gerard 
%A Abate, Alessandro 
%T A Neural Hybrid-System Model of the Basal Ganglia
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2007
%8 January 16
%@ UCB/EECS-2007-16
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2007/EECS-2007-16.html
%F Makin:EECS-2007-16