Timing of consecutive traveling pulses in a model of entorhinal cortex

Previous work described a detailed spiking model of interactions between the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex in guiding rat spatial navigation behavior. The timing of spiking activity in the entorhinal cortex is critical for the proper functioning of that model. Here we investigate the influence of several parameters of the model on the spike timing of consecutive traveling pulses within the network of spiking neurons with biologically realistic synaptic parameters. The results suggest that the local properties of the circuit consisting of pyramidal cell and interneuron affect the time interval between consecutive traveling pulses, while the strength of excitatory coupling between these circuits has little influence unless this strength is too small. These results can be generalized to other models of similar architecture that exhibit traveling pulses behavior, and also serve as a basis of further development of full scale realistic implementation of the formal model of spatial navigation.