Fluctuation-driven rhythmogenesis in an excitatory neuronal network with slow adaptation

We study an excitatory all-to-all coupled network of N spiking neurons with synaptically filtered background noise and slow activity-dependent hyperpolarization currents. Such a system exhibits noise-induced burst oscillations over a range of values of the noise strength (variance) and level of cell excitability. Since both of these quantities depend on the rate of background synaptic inputs, we show how noise can provide a mechanism for increasing the robustness of rhythmic bursting and the range of burst frequencies. By exploiting a separation of time scales we also show how the system dynamics can be reduced to low-dimensional mean field equations in the limit N -> infinity. Analysis of the bifurcation structure of the mean field equations provides insights into the dynamical mechanisms for initiating and terminating the bursts.