Stimulus-evoked synchronization in neuronal models

It is known that stimulus-evoked synchronization among neurons occurs in widely separated cortical regions. In this paper we test that how common, random but not deterministic inputs can synchronize groups of neurons with their parameters inside physiologically plausible regions. When a common, random input is presented, we find that a group of neurons-of integrate-and-fire or Hodgkin-Huxley models-are capable of rapidly synchronizing their firing. Interestingly the optimal average synchronization time occurs when the efferent spikes have a high coefficient of variation of interspike intervals (greater than 0.5). (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.