  Voltage-sensitive dye imaging (VSDi) has revealed fundamental properties of
neocortical processing at mesoscopic scales. Since VSDi signals report the
average membrane potential, it seems natural to use a mean-field formalism to
model such signals. Here, we investigate a mean-field model of networks of
Adaptive Exponential (AdEx) integrate-and-fire neurons, with conductance-based
synaptic interactions. The AdEx model can capture the spiking response of
different cell types, such as regular-spiking (RS) excitatory neurons and
fast-spiking (FS) inhibitory neurons. We use a Master Equation formalism,
together with a semi-analytic approach to the transfer function of AdEx
neurons. We compare the predictions of this mean-field model to simulated
networks of RS-FS cells, first at the level of the spontaneous activity of the
network, which is well predicted by the mean-field model. Second, we
investigate the response of the network to time-varying external input, and
show that the mean-field model accurately predicts the response time course of
the population. One notable exception was that the "tail" of the response at
long times was not well predicted, because the mean-field does not include
adaptation mechanisms. We conclude that the Master Equation formalism can yield
mean-field models that predict well the behavior of nonlinear networks with
conductance-based interactions and various electrophysiolgical properties, and
should be a good candidate to model VSDi signals where both excitatory and
inhibitory neurons contribute.
