Spontaneous behaviour in neural networks

Some considerations on the importance of spontaneous firing in animal behaviour after introduction of a parameter, called the spontaneity parameter, helpful in describing the amount of spontaneous behaviour of a neuron or net of them are concluded.

Abstract

We set up a general theory of neural networks in which each neuron is treated realistically as a noise generator due to'the spontaneous emission of packets of transmitter substance at the synapses it makes with other neurons. This description allows the time development of firing probabilities, either for single neurons or those composing a net, to be obtained. This is simplest in discrete time, though is still possible in continuous time. The deterministic limit of the discrete time development is obtained and shown to agree with the decision equations of Caianiello. We conclude by some considerations on the importance of spontaneous firing in animal behaviour after introduction of a parameter, called the spontaneity parameter, helpful in describing the amount of spontaneous behaviour of a neuron or net of them.