Spiking Neural P Systems With Microglia

Spiking neural P systems (SNP systems), one of the parallel and distributed computing models with biological interpretability, have been a hot research topic in bio-inspired computational models in recent years. To improve the stability of the models, this study introduces microglia in the biological nervous system into SNP systems and proposes SNP systems with microglia (MSNP systems). In MSNP systems, besides neurons, another cell type named microglia is introduced. Microglia can help neurons in the range of action maintain homeostasis and prevent excitotoxicity, i.e., excessive excitability. Specifically, microglia use a new microglial maintenance rule to lower the number of spikes in neurons within their range of action when it is too high. The computational capability and efficiency of MSNP systems are also proved. This study makes SNP systems more stable and avoids data overflow or data explosion problems to some degree.