Weak formulation and spectral approximation of a Fokker-Planck equation for neural ensembles

Abstract: In this paper, we focus on efficiently and flexibly simulating the Fokker-Planck equation associated with the Nonlinear Noisy Leaky Integrate-and-Fire (NNLIF) model, which reflects the dynamic behavior of neuron networks. We apply the Galerkin spectral method to discretize the spatial domain by constructing a variational formulation that satisfies complex boundary conditions. Moreover, the boundary conditions in the variational formulation include only zeroth-order terms, with first-order conditions being naturally incorporated. This allows the numerical scheme to be further extended to an excitatory-inhibitory population model with synaptic delays and refractory states. Additionally, we establish the consistency of the numerical scheme. Experimental results, including accuracy tests, blow-up events, and periodic oscillations, validate the properties of our proposed method.