LOCAL LATERAL INHIBITION - A KEY TO SPIKE SYNCHRONIZATION

Starting from the idea that neural group activity as such is unlikely to be immediately relevant for neural synchronization, we investigate mechanisms that act at the level of individual nerve impulses (spikes) . Hence, we consider populations of formal spike-emitting 'leaky integ rate and fire' neurons instead of networks built from non-spiking osci llators. After outlining the principle of synchronization for basic fo rms of recurrent impulse coupling by using a pair of simplified formal neurons, we show that local lateral inhibition results in robust impu lse synchronization in networks with non-vanishing transmission delays .