A simplified voltage-conductance kinetic model for interacting neurons and its asymptotic limit

Abstract

The voltage-conductance kinetic model for the collective behavior of neurons has been studied by scientists and mathematicians for two decades, but the rigorous analysis of its solution structure has been only partially obtained in spite of plenty of numerical evidence in various scenarios. In this work, we consider a simplified voltage-conductance model in which the velocity field in the voltage variable is in a separable form. The long time behavior of the simplified model is fully investigated leading to the following dichotomy: either the density function converges to the global equilibrium, or the firing rate diverges as time goes to infinity. Besides, the fast conductance asymptotic limit is justified and analyzed, where the solution to the limit model either blows up in finite time, or globally exists leading to time periodic solutions. An important implication of these results is that the non-separable velocity field, or physically the leaky mechanism, is a key element for the emergence of periodic solutions in the original model based on the available numerical evidence.