Nitric oxide: What can it compute?

TY - JOUR

T1 - Nitric oxide

T2 - What can it compute?

AU - Krekelberg, B.

AU - Taylor, J. G.

N1 - Funding Information: BK would like to thank the European Community Human Capital and Mobility Programme for financial support (ERBCHBICT941620), Rasmus Petersen for many valuable discussions and Ton Coolen and an anonymous referee for helpful comments.

PY - 1997/2

Y1 - 1997/2

N2 - Nitric oxide, a messenger molecule that diffuses over large distances in cortical tissue, may underlie a form of non-local, non-synapse-specific learning. This non-locality leads to issues that are commonly ignored in Hebbian learning rules. We discuss these issues and extend neural field theory to investigate the role of the diffusing messenger NO. This analytic framework is used to show that NO could develop cortical maps without the need for lateral-inhibitory interactions. We argue that this is a more plausible model for map-formation in early development when lateral interactions are immature. Maps formed by this NO mechanism have a specific dependence on the properties of the diffusing messenger NO. These dependences are extracted from the model and can be explored in experiments.

AB - Nitric oxide, a messenger molecule that diffuses over large distances in cortical tissue, may underlie a form of non-local, non-synapse-specific learning. This non-locality leads to issues that are commonly ignored in Hebbian learning rules. We discuss these issues and extend neural field theory to investigate the role of the diffusing messenger NO. This analytic framework is used to show that NO could develop cortical maps without the need for lateral-inhibitory interactions. We argue that this is a more plausible model for map-formation in early development when lateral interactions are immature. Maps formed by this NO mechanism have a specific dependence on the properties of the diffusing messenger NO. These dependences are extracted from the model and can be explored in experiments.

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U2 - https://doi.org/10.1088/0954-898X_8_1_003

DO - https://doi.org/10.1088/0954-898X_8_1_003

M3 - Article

SN - 0954-898X

VL - 8

SP - 1

EP - 16

JO - Network: Computation in Neural Systems

JF - Network: Computation in Neural Systems

IS - 1

ER -