Lynch and
Houghton’s method fills a clear need in the neuroinformatics field and
moves forward the possibilities for neuron modeling in in vivo
electrophysiology research. There exist many avenues for further
improvement, including models with more biologically interpretable
parameters and improved optimization algorithms.
In this
paper, we propose a dynamical systems-based neuron model combined with
an STRF filter that provides superior prediction accuracy with a
computationally efficient optimization algorithm. This method is based
on a Hindmarsh-Rose (HR) neuron model (Hindmarsh & Rose, 1984),
which strikes a balance between the limited parameter sets of the
integrate-and-fire models and the biological realism of the
Hodgkin-Huxley ion current models (Hodgkin & Huxley, 1952). The
feature space is explored by emcee (Foreman-Mackey et al., 2013), a Python implementation of a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), to find a local optima using the computationally efficient SPIKY synchronization metric (Kreuz et al., 2015) as the fitness function.
This combination of algorithms is first tested on simulated data with
known parameters, and then validated on a real data set recorded in vivo from auditory neurons in the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata).