Information Processing in Spiking Neuron-Astrocyte Network in Ageing

Recent experimental works revealed that astrocytes are the critical players involved in dynamic interaction with neurons in information processing and storage. Several studies provided direct evidence of the involvement of abnormal astrocytic signaling in cognitive impairment. Astroglial atrophy is observed in many age-dependent neurodegenerative diseases. Astroglial morphological atrophy underlies the decrease in synaptic coverage, which in turn contributes to a decrease in the cognitive abilities of the brain. However, in many cases, the understanding of astrocytic involvement is still incomplete. Now that we better understand the molecular components of astrocyte-neuron interactions, the new challenge is to investigate how they integrate at the network and physiological levels. To address this question, novel, bio-inspired, and detailed computational models should be developed to simulate the information processing through the coordinated activity of both astrocytes and neurons. In this work, we studied the effect of astroglial atrophy on information processing in model of spiking neuron-astrocyte network that implements the functions of short-term memory. According to the results obtained, a disorder of the morphology of the astrocytes of the network leads to a significant decrease in the quality of reproduction of the memorized information.