Spiking and Bursting Firing Patterns of a Compact VLSI Cortical Neuron Circuit

Abstract

The paper presents a silicon neuron circuit that mimics the behaviour of known classes of biological neurons. The circuit has been designed in a 0.35μm CMOS technology. The firing patterns of basic cell classes: <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">regular spiking</i> (RS), <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">fast spiking</i> (FS), <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">chattering</i> (CH) and <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">intrinsic bursting</i> (IB) are obtained with a simple adjustment of two biasing voltages. The simulations reveal the potential of the circuit to provide a wide variety of cell behaviours with required accommodation and firing frequency of a given cell type. The neuron consumes only 14 MOSFETs enabling the integration of many neurons in a small silicon area. Hence, the circuit provides a foundation for designing massively parallel analogue neuromorphic networks that closely resemble the circuits of the cortex.