  Using a realistic model of activity dependent dynamical synapses and a
standard integrate and fire neuron model we study, both analytically and
numerically, the conditions in which a postsynaptic neuron efficiently detects
temporal coincidences of spikes arriving at certain frequency from N different
afferents. We extend a previous work that only considers synaptic depression as
the most important mechanism in the transmission of information through
synapses, to a more general situation including also synaptic facilitation. Our
study shows that: 1) facilitation enhances the detection of correlated signals
arriving from a subset of presynaptic excitatory neurons, with different
degrees of correlation among this subset, and 2) the presence of facilitation
allows for a better detection of firing rate changes. Finally, we also observed
that facilitation determines the existence of an optimal input frequency which
allows the best performance for a wide (maximum) range of the neuron firing
threshold. This optimal frequency can be controlled by means of facilitation
parameters.
