Biological neurons receive multiple noisy oscillatory signals, and their dynamical response to the superposition of these signals is of fundamental importance for information processing in the brain. Here we study the response of neural systems to the weak envelope modulation signal, which is superimposed by two periodic signals with different frequencies. We show that stochastic resonance occurs at the beat frequency in neural systems at the single-neuron as well as the population level. The performance of this frequency-difference-dependent stochastic resonance is influenced by both the beat frequency and the two forcing frequencies. Compared to a single neuron, a population of neurons is more efficient in detecting the information carried by the weak envelope modulation signal at the beat frequency. Furthermore, an appropriate fine-tuning of the excitation-inhibition balance can further optimize the response of a neural ensemble to the superimposed signal. Our results thus introduce and provide insights into the generation and modulation mechanism of the frequency-difference-dependent stochastic resonance in neural systems.
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