Heterogeneous stochastic bifurcations explain intrinsic oscillatory patterns in entorhinal cortical stellate cells

Stellate cells (SC) in the medial entorhinal cortex manifest intrinsic membrane potential oscillatory patterns. Although different theoretical frameworks have been proposed to explain these patterns, a robust unifying framework that jointly accounts for intrinsic heterogeneities and stochasticity is missing. Here, we first performed in vitro patch-clamp electrophysiological recordings from rat SCs and found pronounced cell-to-cell variability in their characteristic physiological properties, including peri-threshold oscillatory patterns. We demonstrate that noise introduced into two independent populations (endowed with deterministic or stochastic ion-channel gating kinetics) of heterogeneous biophysical models yielded activity patterns that were qualitatively similar to electrophysiological peri-threshold oscillatory activity in SCs. We developed spectrogram-based quantitative metrics for the identification of valid oscillations and confirmed that these metrics reliably captured the variable-amplitude and arhythmic oscillatory patterns observed in electrophysiological recordings. Using these quantitative metrics, we validated activity patterns from both heterogeneous populations of SC models, with each model assessed with multiple trials of different levels of noise at distinct membrane depolarizations. Our analyses unveiled the manifestation of stochastic resonance (detection of the highest number of valid oscillatory traces at an optimal level of noise) in both heterogeneous populations of SC models. Finally, we show that a generalized network motif comprised of a slow negative feedback loop amplified by a fast positive feedback loop manifested stochastic bifurcations and stochastic resonance in the emergence of oscillations. Together, through a unique convergence of the degeneracy and stochastic resonance frameworks, our unifying framework centered on heterogeneous stochastic bifurcations argues for state-dependent emergence of SC oscillations.