ANALYSIS OF SYNFIRE CHAINS

The biological implications of synfire-chain neural networks are explo red by studying two idealized models. First, a network model with bina ry firing neurons and parallel updating is proposed. This model can be solved exactly in the thermodynamic limit using the mean-field theory . An explicit equation for the capacity is obtained. In the second mod el, the synchrony of the pulse of activity along a synfire chain is in vestigated in the context of simple integrate-and-fire neurons. It is found that under natural assumptions a near-synchronous wave of activi ty can propagate stably along a synfire chain. The relevance of this r esult for real systems is discussed.