Neuron modeling: estimating the parameters of a neuron model from neural spiking data

Abstract

We present a modeling study aiming at the estimation of the parameters of a single neuron model from neural spiking data. The model receives a stimulus as input and provides the firing rate of the neuron as output. The neural spiking data will be obtained from point process simulation. The resultant data will be used in parameter estimation based on the inhomogeneous Poisson maximum likelihood method. The model will be stimulated by various forms of stimuli, which are modeled by a Fourier series (FS), exponential functions, and radial basis functions (RBFs). Tabulated results presenting cases with different sample sizes (# of repeated trials), stimulus component sizes (FS and RBF), amplitudes, and frequency ranges (FS) will be presented to validate the approach and provide a means of comparison. The results showed that regardless of the stimulus type, the most effective parameter on the estimation performance appears to be the sample size. In addition, the lowest variance of the estimates is obtained when a Fourier series stimulus is applied in the estimation.