  The Integrated Information is a quantitative measure from information theory
how tightly all parts of a system are interconnected in terms of information
exchange. In this study we show that astrocyte, playing an important role in
regulation of information transmission between neurons, may contribute to a
generation of positive Integrated Information in neuronal ensembles.
Analytically and numerically we show that the presence of astrocyte may be
essential for this information attribute in neuro-astrocytic ensembles.
Moreover, the proposed "spiking-bursting" mechanism of generating positive
Integrated Information is shown to be generic and not limited to neuroglial
networks, and is given a complete analytic description.
