On the role of astrocyte analog circuit in neural frequency adaptation

In the present study, we develop an analog neuromorphic circuit to implement the astrocyte dynamics. The intracellular calcium waves produced by astrocytes are modeled by a simplified dynamical model which considers the main pathways of neuron–astrocyte interactions. Then, a simple CMOS circuit implementation that maps the model on hardware is proposed. It is designed and simulated using HSPICE simulator in 0.35 μm standard CMOS technology. The simulation results illustrate that the proposed astrocyte circuit is a good candidate for applications in neuromorphic devices which implement biologically plausible neural circuits. Finally, the proposed astrocyte analog circuit is used to study neural frequency adaptation. The results of simulations demonstrate that in low frequency range, the astrocyte circuit can have a significant role in the frequency adaptation of the neuronal model. The low power consumption (205 μW) and the compactness of the circuit make it a practical solution for the implementation of dense arrays of spiking neurons and astrocytes in a single chip.

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