SYNCHRONIZATION AND COMPLEX DYNAMICS IN PULSE-COUPLED CIRCUIT MODELS OF NEURONS

Synchronization of neurons may have some biological significance, but there are questions about how neurons can sometimes be synchronized an d sometimes not. In this work, electronic circuit models of the Fitzhu gh-Nagumo equations are used to stimulate four pulse-coupled neurons. For some coupling configurations, the circuits are only partly synchro nized even though all circuits share a common drive. It is shown that this partial synchronization is a byproduct of high-dimensional (but n ot necessarily chaotic) dynamics.