# Inhibitory STDP (Borges 2017 equations)

**URL:** <https://brian.discourse.group/t/inhibitory-stdp-borges-2017-equations/646>\
**Category:** Science, Projects, and Showcases\
**Created:** [2 April 2022 14:40 UTC](https://brian.discourse.group/t/inhibitory-stdp-borges-2017-equations/646 "2022-04-02T14:40:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nvar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90ced4/32.png) [@nvar](https://brian.discourse.group/u/nvar)\
**Post date:** [2 April 2022 14:40 UTC](https://brian.discourse.group/t/inhibitory-stdp-borges-2017-equations/646/1 "2022-04-02T14:40:43Z")

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Hello all! As the title suggests, I am trying to implement the plasticity for the inhibitory synapses using the equations from the paper cited. The equation for the excitatory synapses was easy enough to adapt, it is very simple to the examples from the synapses tutorial (great examples!). The equation for the plasticity with the corresponding graph is below:

![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/free1/uploads/brian/original/1X/af7f68efc6a495bd1909b0deb388d4a289df1932.png)

![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/free1/uploads/brian/original/1X/60632b1bdbc60a5189301f7c73abe780dbbb956f.png)

All the parameter values (g0, alpha, beta) are known and are set to g0=0.02, beta=10., alpha=0.94 (if delta\_t \> 0) alpha=1.1 (if delta\_t \< 0) and gnorm = beta\*\*beta \* exp(-beta), and delta\_t is the time difference between pre/post-synaptic spikes.

Has anyone implemented anything similar or knows how to write this kind of equations in brian2 syntax? I have gone through the posted examples, tried to isolate the exponential term (as in the synapses tutorial) but there is the delta\_t term in an abs() in front of that, which is then multiplied with delta\_t raised to a power.

Thanks in advance!

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**Author:** ![mstimberg](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/brian.discourse.group/mstimberg/32/11_2.png) [@mstimberg](https://brian.discourse.group/u/mstimberg)\
**Post date:** [4 April 2022 11:55 UTC](https://brian.discourse.group/t/inhibitory-stdp-borges-2017-equations/646/2 "2022-04-04T11:55:32Z")

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Hi @nvar . Very interesting question! We should explain this better in the tutorial (or elsewhere). The reason why we replace the “standard” STDP equations by differential equations in the tutorial is that it models “all-to-all” interactions, i.e. a spike triggers updates depending on its distance in time to _all_ preceding spikes – of course, most of them happened sufficiently long ago that they won’t have any effect in practice. In equations, this is usually expressed with some “sum over previous spike times” term. This would be very inefficient to implement directly (need to store all previous spike times, need to run a sum over more and more terms or need to introduce some cut-off, etc.), but can be implemented in a straightforward and efficient way with the differential equation formalism. In your paper, this is not necessary, since they are using a “nearest-neighbor” implementation, i.e. for each spike we are only interested in its interaction with the preceding spike. You can recognize these models by the absence of a “sum over spike times” term, and by formulations like "\delta t\_{ij} is the difference between _the_ presynaptic spike time t\_i and _the_ postsynaptic spike time t\_j" (i.e., there is only a single pre- and postsynaptic spike time to consider). You can find more about this topic in section 4.1.2 of [Morrison et al. (2008)](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-008-0233-1).

Since we only have to consider a single spike time for each pre- and postsynaptic neuron, we can store this time for each spike as a variable in the neuron, and then refer to it with the equation directly copied from the paper. If your neuron model uses [refractoriness](https://brian2.readthedocs.io/en/stable/user/refractoriness.html), Brian automatically defines a `lastspike` variable. If not, you can add it to the equations yourself, and update it for every spike.

Below, example code that does this. Instead of a real neuron model, it uses a neuron that simply spikes at a predetermined time. One neuron spikes at 30ms, and 100 neurons spike at times between 10ms and 50ms. By connecting the first neuron to all the other neurons, we get pre/post pairings with \delta t\_{ij} values between -20ms and 20ms. For each pre- and post-synaptic spike, we then store the spike time in the `lastspike` variable of the respective neuron, calculate \delta t\_{ij}, and then update `w` according to the equation you posted (using two different \alpha variables for positive and negative \delta t\_{ij} values, i.e. pre-before-post and post-before-pre pairings):

```python
from brian2 import *

beta = 10.0
alpha_pre_post = 0.94 # delta_t > 0
alpha_post_pre = 1.1 # delta_t < 0
g_0 = 0.02
g_norm = beta**beta * exp(-beta)

G = NeuronGroup(101, '''
spike_when : second (constant)
lastspike : second # remove when model uses refractory
''',
threshold='timestep(t, dt) == timestep(spike_when, dt)') # spike at pre-defined time
G.lastspike = -1e9*second
G.spike_when[0] = 30*ms
G.spike_when[1:] = np.linspace(10, 50, 100)*ms

S = Synapses(G, G, 'w : 1',
on_pre='''
lastspike_pre = t
delta_t = (lastspike_post - lastspike_pre)/ms
w += g_0/g_norm * alpha_post_pre**beta*abs(delta_t)*delta_t**(beta - 1)*exp(-alpha_post_pre*abs(delta_t))
''',
on_post='''
lastspike_post = t
delta_t = (lastspike_post - lastspike_pre)/ms
w += g_0/g_norm * alpha_pre_post**beta*abs(delta_t)*delta_t**(beta - 1)*exp(-alpha_pre_post*abs(delta_t))
''',
)
S.connect(i=0, j=np.arange(1, 101)) # Connect first neuron to all other neurons

run(51*ms)

plt.plot((G.spike_when[1:] - G.spike_when[0])/ms, S.w[:], color='r')
plt.axhline(linestyle=':', color='k')
plt.axvline(linestyle=':', color='k')
plt.show()

```

The result seems to faithfully reproduce their curve (the value on the y axis goes up to \pm g\_0 instead of \pm 1, but they probably normalized things for the plot.  
 ![stdp_plot](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/free1/uploads/brian/original/1X/f7cabbff45d2ead6d8c9a7172d1e46b2eec3b85d.png)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nvar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90ced4/32.png) [@nvar](https://brian.discourse.group/u/nvar)\
**Post date:** [13 April 2022 09:10 UTC](https://brian.discourse.group/t/inhibitory-stdp-borges-2017-equations/646/4 "2022-04-13T09:10:16Z")

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Thank you for the detailed (and great, as always) answer! I implemented it following your advice and it works wonders. Thank you again!