Spike-timing-dependent synaptic plasticity: from single spikes to spike trains

We present a neurobiologically motivated model of a neuron with active dendrites and dynamic synapses, and a training algorithm which builds upon single spike-timing-dependent synaptic plasticity derived from neurophysiological evidence. We show that in the presence of a moderate level of noise, the plasticity rule can be extended from single to multiple pre-synaptic spikes and applied to effectively train a neuron in detecting temporal sequences of spike trains. The trained neuron responds reliably under different regimes and types of noise. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.