Inverse stochastic resonance (ISR) is a phenomenon in which the firing activity of a neuron is inhibited at a certain noise level. In this paper, the effects of potassium channel blockage on ISR in single Hodgkin-Huxley neurons and in small-world networks were investigated. For the single neuron, the ion channel noise-induced ISR phenomenon can occur only in a certain small range of potassium channel blockage ratio. Bifurcation analysis showed that this small range is the bistable region regulated by the external bias current. For small-world networks, the effect of non-homogeneous network blockage on ISR was investigated. The network blockage ratio was used to represent the proportion of potassium-channel-blocked neurons to total network neurons. It is found that an increase in network blockage ratio at small coupling strengths results in shorter ISR duration. When the coupling strength is increased, the ISR is more significant in the case of a large network blockage ratio. The ISR phenomenon is determined by the network blockage ratio, the coupling strength, and the ion channel noise. Our results will provide new perspectives on the observation of ISR in neuroscience experiments.
