Delay adaptation in the nervous system

Time delays are ubiquitous in the nervous system. Empirical findings sugges t that time delays are adapted when considering the synchronous activity of neurons. We introduce a framework for studying the dynamics of self-organi zed delay adaptation in systems which optimize coincidence of inputs. The f ramework comprises two families of delay adaptation mechanisms, delay shift and delay selection. For the important case of periodically modulated inpu t we derive conditions for the existence and stability of solutions which c onstrain learning rules for reliable delay adaptation. Delay adaptation is also applicable in the case of several spatiotemporal neuronal input patter ns. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.