Rhythm Synchronization of Coupled Neurons with Temporal Coding Scheme

Encoding information by firing patterns is one of the basic neural functions, and synchronization is important collective behaviour of a group of coupled neurons. Taking account of two schemes for encoding information (that is, rate coding and temporal coding), rhythm synchronization of coupled neurons is studied. There are two types of rhythm synchronization of neurons: spike and burst synchronizations. Firstly, it is shown that the spike synchronization is equivalent to the phase synchronization for coupled neurons. Secondly, the similarity function of the slow variables of neurons, which have relevant to the
bursting process, is proposed to judge the burst synchronization. It is also found that the burst synchronization can be achieved more easily than the spike synchronization, whatever the firing patterns of the neurons are. Hence the temporal encoding scheme, which is closely related to both the spike and burst synchronizations, is more comprehensive than the rate coding scheme in essence.