The Proposal of a Neuron Model in Consideration of Facilitation and Fatigue

Abstract

In the past research on the neural transform model, some researchers took both excitation and inhibition factors into consideration. However, these past models relate to diffusion of the substance between neighboring cells, therefore these models are not rational for considering both excitation and inhibition factors in a separate cell. When repeated stimulation depolarizes a presynaptic axon terminal, the level of Ca2+ in the presynaptic axon terminal is increased. Thus, an increased number of quanta of transmitter are released. On the other hand, the release of the transmitter will result in the decrease in the quantity of the transmitter in the presynaptic axon terminal. Based on these physiology characteristics of synaptic transmission, we propose a new model in which facilitation and fatigue are both considered in a separate cell. Using the proposed model, short-term memory process, image feature detection and other image processing were simulated. We suggest that the proposed model is a valid and widely applicable neural model.