Lei Wang, Shenquan Liu, Yanjun Zeng

Firing properties of single neurons in the nervous system have been recognized to be determined by their intrinsic ion channel dynamics and extrinsic
synaptic inputs. Previous studies have suggested that dendritic structures exhibit significant roles in the modulation of somatic firing behavior in neurons. Following
these studies, we show that finite information transmission delay between dendrite and soma can also influence the somatic firings in neurons. Our investigation is
based on a two-compartment model which can approximately reproduce the firing activity of cortical pyramidal neurons. The obtained simulation results indicate
that under subthreshold stimulus, spontaneous fast spiking activity is induced by large values of time delay, while for suprathreshold stimulus, regular bursting,
chaotic firing and fast spiking can be observed under different time delays. More importantly, the transition mode between these diverse firing patterns with the
variation of delay shows a period-doubling phenomenon under certain stimulus in-tensity. Consequently, our model results can not only illustrate the influential roles
of internal time delay in the generation of a diversity of neuronal firing patterns,but also provide us with frameworks for investigating the impacts of internal time
delay on the firing properties of many other neurons in the nervous system.

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