On String Languages Generated by Spiking Neural P Systems with Astrocytes

Spiking neural P systems with astrocytes (SNPA systems, for short) are a class of distributed parallel computing devices inspired from the way spikes pass along the synapses between neurons. In this work, we investigate the computational power of SNPA systems as language generators. Specifically, representations of recursively enumerable languages and of regular languages are given by means of SNPA systems without forgetting rules. Furthermore, a simple finite language is produced which can be generated by SNPA systems, while it cannot be generated by usual spiking neural P systems. These results show that the astrocytes are a powerful ingredient for spiking neural P systems as language generators.