Exploring the Functional Significance of Dendritic Inhibition in Cortical Pyramidal Cells

Inhibitory synapses contacting the soma and axon initial segment are commonly\npresumed to participate in shaping the response properties of cortical pyramidal\ncells. Such an inhibitory mechanism has been explored in numerous computational\nmodels. However, the majority of inhibitory synapses target the dendrites of\npyramidal cells, and recent physiological data suggests that this dendritic\ninhibition affects tuning properties. We describe a model that can be used to\ninvestigate the role of dendritic inhibition in the competition between\nneurons. With this model we demonstrate that dendritic inhibition significantly\nenhances the computational and representational properties of neural networks.\n