Modeling elucidates how refractory period can provide profound nonlinear gain control to graded potential neurons

Refractory period (RP) plays a central role in neural signalling. Because it limits an excitable membrane’s recovery time from a previous excitation, it can restrict information transmission. Classically, RP means the recovery time from an action potential (spike), and its impact to encoding has been mostly studied in spiking neurons. However, many sensory neurons do not communicate with spikes but convey information by graded potential changes. In these systems, RP can arise as an intrinsic property of their quantal micro/nanodomain sampling events, as recently revealed for quantum bumps (single photon responses) in microvillar photoreceptors. Whilst RP is directly unobservable and hard to measure, masked by the graded macroscopic response that integrates numerous quantal events, modelling can uncover its role in encoding. Here, we investigate computationally how RP can affect encoding of graded neural responses. Simulations in a simple stochastic process model for a fly photoreceptor elucidate how RP can profoundly contribute to nonlinear gain control to achieve a large dynamic range.