Parrot neuronΒΆ

class parrot_neuron : public Archiving_Node
#include <parrot_neuron.h>

Name: parrot_neuron - Neuron that repeats incoming spikes.

Description:

The parrot neuron simply emits one spike for every incoming spike. An important application is to provide identical poisson spike trains to a group of neurons. The poisson_generator sends a different spike train to each of its target neurons. By connecting one poisson_generator to a parrot_neuron and then that parrot_neuron to a group of neurons, all target neurons will receive the same poisson spike train.

Remarks:

  • Weights on connection to the parrot_neuron are ignored.

  • Weights on connections from the parrot_neuron are handled as usual.

  • Delays are honored on incoming and outgoing connections.

  • Multiplicity may be used to indicate number of spikes in a single time step. Instead of the accumulated weigths of the incoming spikes, the number of the spikes is stored within a ring buffer.

Only spikes arriving on connections to port 0 will be repeated. Connections onto port 1 will be accepted, but spikes incoming through port 1 will be ignored. This allows setting exact pre- and post-synaptic spike times for STDP protocols by connecting two parrot neurons spiking at desired times by, e.g., a stdp_synapse onto port 1 on the post-synaptic parrot neuron.

Receives: SpikeEvent

Sends: SpikeEvent

Parameters:

No parameters to be set in the status dictionary.

Author: David Reichert, Abigail Morrison, Alexander Seeholzer, Hans Ekkehard Plesser

FirstVersion: May 2006