Synaptic Rewiring for Topographic Map Formation

A model of topographic map development is presented which combines both weight plasticity and the formation and elimination of synapses as well as both activity-dependent and -independent processes. We statistically address the question of whether an activity-dependent process can refine a mapping created by an activity-independent process. A new method of evaluating the quality of topographic projections is presented which allows independent consideration of the development of a projection’s preferred locations and variance. Synapse formation and elimination embed in the network topology changes in the weight distributions of synapses due to the activity-dependent learning rule used (spike-timing-dependent plasticity). In this model, variance of a projection can be reduced by an activity dependent mechanism with or without spatially correlated inputs, but the accuracy of preferred locations will not necessarily improve when synapses are formed based on distributions with on-average perfect topography.