A study on weak signal detection of dressed Morris Lecar neuron in chaotic environment

Abstract

It is a known fact that astrocytes not only physically support neurons by supplying nutrients to the nervous tissue and maintaining the extracellular ionic balance but they also communicate bidirectionally and electrochemically with neurons. Besides that, it is also realized that neurons optimize their information-processing abilities with the help of chaotic signals. In this paper, we investigated the weak signal detection performance of the dressed Morris Lecar neuron in a chaotic environment that was produced via the Lorenz system. According to obtained results, it is observed that astrocyte significantly increases the weak signal detection performance of Morris Lecar neuron at the optimal coupling conductivity and chaotic current intensity. It is noticed that the maximal weak signal detection performance of the dressed Morris Lecar neuron exhibit resonance for all coupling conductivities depending on the frequency of the weak signal. This resonance in maximal weak signal detection performance of the dressed Morris Lecar neuron depends on the frequency of weak signal when coupling conductivity exceeds a certain value. It is observed that the weak signal detection performance of neuron exhibited resonance versus the coupling conductivity for optimal chaotic current intensity. Furthermore, it is detected that the astrocyte supplies different levels of DC to the neuron depending on chaotic current intensity and coupling conductivity. In addition, in this study, the behaviors of the model when exposed to electrical and chemical synapse is analyzed, and it is shown that the electrical synapse significantly increased the weak signal detection performance of the dressed Morris Lecar neuron.