Chaotic dynamics from interspike intervals

Considering two different mathematical models describing chaotic spiking phenomena, namely, an integrate-and-fire and a threshold-crossing model, we discuss the problem of extracting dynamics from interspike intervals (ISIs) and show that the possibilities of computing the largest Lyapunov exponent (LE) from point processes differ between the two models. We also consider the problem of estimating the second LE and the possibility to diagnose hyperchaotic behavior by processing spike trains. Since the second exponent is quite sensitive to the structure of the ISI series, we investigate the problem of its computation.