Memristive autapse involving magnetic coupling and excitatory autapse enhance firing

Autapse is the synaptic coupling of a neuron's axon to its own dendrite. Considering recent experimental evidence regarding functional excitatory autapses, we explored how the excitatory autapse influences electrical activity in a neuronal model with ion-channel effects. We found that the excitatory autaptic current is able to enhance firing rates. Based on the chemical features of the autapse, we further proposed a memristive autapse involving magnetic coupling, and compared the memristive autapse and the excitatory autapse using the bifurcation analysis and fast/slow decomposition. Our results identified that both of these two types of autapses exhibit similar geometric dynamic properties in terms of burst regulation. Comparing with the excitatory autapse, the memristive autapse involves in a stronger spiking modulation capability, ensuring the neuron to accommodate strong external inputs. Overall, these findings suggested that the memristive system is expected to be usable to mimic biological synapses for advances in neuromorphic computing.