Comments to the Interim Report on Olfactory bulb modeling

Erik De Schutter (erik@kuifje.bbf.uia.ac.be)
Wed, 4 Jan 95 16:59:43 GMT

General comment:
Why has Harry gone through the trouble of creating another modeling
software program? Little is new about his comments 2-4, which have
been addressed in other compartmental modeling software (see E. De Schutter:
A consumer guide to neuronal modeling software. Trends in Neurosciences
15: 462-464, 1992). Especially his comment #2 is vexing in this regard:
it is true that implicit integration methods are much better and several
popular modeling packages have implemented them efficiently (e.g. GENESIS
and NEURON). Why bother using your own software if it uses less accurate
explicit methods?

Comment 1:
My experience also. I still have to find the modeling paper that can be
replicated without problems.

Comment 5
This is a legitimate issue. Some solutions to this problem have been
suggested in the literature (e.g. E. De Schutter, J.D. Angstadt and R.L.
Calabrese: A model of graded synaptic transmission for use in dynamic
network simulations. Journal of Neurophysiology 69: 1225-1235, 1993),
but general implementations are lacking. Electrical synapses have
been implemented in GENESIS in a manner compatible with the implicit
solution methods.

Comment 6
I would advise Harry to be very careful with such a statement. This
might very well reflect lack of robustness of his model, due to
simplifications, errors, lacking data... Also did he control for
accuracy of integration problems?

Comment 7-9
I am not familiar enough with the olfactory bulb to comment on these
results. But I wonder if the result in comment 7 is an emergent
property of the simulation, or was the behavior of the periglomerular
build into the system?

Erik De Schutter
Born Bunge Foundation, University of Antwerp, Belgium
erik@kuifje.bbf.uia.ac.be