Bifurcations in Morris-Lecar Model Exposed to DC Electric Field

As an important neuron model, the Morris-Lecar (ML) equations can exhibit classes I and II excitabilities with appropriate system parameters. In this paper, the effects of external DC electric field on the neuro-computational properties of ML model are investigated using bifurcation analysis. We obtain the bifurcation diagram in two dimensional parameter space of externally applied DC current and trans-membrane potential induced by external DC electric field. The bifurcation sets partition the two dimensional parameter space about the qualitatively different behaviors of the ML model. Thus the neuron's information encodes the stimulus information, and vice versa, which is significant in neural control. Furthermore, we identify the electric field as a key parameter to control the transitions among four different excitability and spiking properties.