Novel Spiking Neuron-Astrocyte Networks based on nonlinear transistor-like models of tripartite synapses.

In this paper a novel and efficient computational implementation of a Spiking Neuron-Astrocyte Network (SNAN) is reported. Neurons are modeled according to the Izhikevich formulation and the neuron-astrocyte interactions are intended as tripartite synapsis and modeled with the previously proposed nonlinear transistor-like model. Concerning the learning rules, the original spike-timing dependent plasticity is used for the neural part of the SNAN whereas an ad-hoc rule is proposed for the astrocyte part.