An accurate and widely applicable method to determine the distribution of synaptic strengths formed by the spike-timing-dependent learning

We provide a mathematical method to determine the distribution of synaptic strengths formed by any types of spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). This becomes possible by applying the theory of Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process in determining the Fokker–Planck equation that characterizes the distribution. We verify our novel method by reproducing quantitative properties of STDP observed in previous simulation results. We apply our method to CA1-type window function and electric sh-type window function to demonstrate possible implications of STDP. Moreover, we derive basic properties of STDP from our formalism. Especially, we determine the optimal window function for synaptic competition. c © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.