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Random Poisson Background Noise Problem

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 6:17 pm
by henrychen1986
For a 1000 cell model I am working on, I want to generate background (spontaneous) activity/noise with Poisson distribution around a specified frequency. The problem i am encountering now is that when i generate a background activity there are too many outliers with many bins exceeding z-scores more than 2.5.

I am presently generating background activity by using the noise in the netstim.

Is there any function in neuron which can solve my problem? Please suggest any methods which will generate activity around the frequency i specified.

The output firing rate is dependent on cell properties, but we think if the input is poisson the output frequency should have smaller range of freq.

Thanks.

Re: Random Poisson Background Noise Problem

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 10:49 am
by ted
If ISIs follow a negexp distribution, the highest instantaneous frequency is infinite and the lowest is 0.
henrychen1986 wrote:we think if the input is poisson the output frequency should have smaller range of freq.
Only if the cell or network that receives the poisson input has an absolute refractory period (to limit the highest frequency) and/or some limit on the longest ISI it can generate. If a system is driven by spike events and is not itself spontaneously active, there is no inherent limitation on the longest output ISI.