Fluctuation-dissipation relations for spiking neurons

Abstract

Spontaneous fluctuations and stimulus response are essential features of neural functioning but how they are connected is poorly understood. I derive fluctuation-dissipation relations (FDR) between the spontaneous spike and voltage correlations and the firing rate susceptibility for i) the leaky integrate-and-fire (IF) model with white noise; ii) an IF model with arbitrary voltage dependence, an adaptation current, and correlated noise. The FDRs can be used to derive correlation statistics or to infer the system's response from observations of its spontaneous activity.