The Integrated Information is a quantitative measure from information theory how tightly all parts of a system are interconnected in terms of information exchange. In this study we show that astrocyte, playing an important role in regulation of information transmission between neurons, may contribute to a generation of positive Integrated Information in neuronal ensembles. Analytically and numerically we show that the presence of astrocyte may be essential for this information attribute in neuro-astrocytic ensembles. Moreover, the proposed spiking-bursting mechanism of generating positive Integrated Information is shown to be generic and not limited to neuroglial networks, and is given a complete analytic description.
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