We investigate the formation of ordered spatiotemporal activations of pools of neurons in synfire chains (SFC) within a balanced network of excitatory and inhibitory neurons, both by simulations on integrate-and-fire (IF) neurons and by analytic tools. Using a suitable matrix of synaptic connections, we show that the results depend on the ratio r between the size of an individual pool of neurons and the total excitatory input of a neuron. In our simulations of 10,000 IF neurons we obtain an asynchronous-irregular firing mode, which does not sustain a traveling wave of SFC activity. Our analysis shows that the latter may be expected to exist in larger networks in which very small r values can be realized.
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