Figure 1.

Network structure with N excitatory neurons (+) and one inhibitory neuron (−), and corresponding excitatory (triangle) and inhibitory (circle) synapses. Excitatory neurons are connected to one another with plastic mutual connections, J^lat. They are in competition with each other via one inhibitory neuron. Each excitatory neuron receives input consisting of a total of N_input = 2000 afferents. Half of these, Iⁱⁿ, alternate between presenting a repeated spatio-temporal pattern (for 50 ms) and Poisson input (for at least 50 ms). The other half, I^noise, continuously present Poisson trains. This input is presented to each of the excitatory neurons, however, across the excitatory neurons the input has only the repeated spatio-temporal pattern in common as the alternating and continuous Poisson trains are different. Furthermore, the repeated spatio-temporal pattern is presented to each neuron at the same time. All input synapses, Jⁱⁿ and J^noise, and lateral synapses, J^lat (except J^lat_ii), are plastic and J^lat_ii = 0.