COOPERATIVE BEHAVIOR OF A CHAIN OF SYNAPTICALLY COUPLED CHAOTIC NEURONS

A coupled linear chain of Hindmarsh-Rose model neurons with reciprocal inhibition between neighboring neurons exhibited synchronous oscillat ions in which neighboring neurons burst out-of-phase and next nearest neighbor neurons burst in-phase. The bifurcations observed inside this ''out-of-phase'' regime were qualitatively the same for all chains wi th an even number of neurons and were similar to those observed in a s ingle isolated cell, although the organization of the behavior of a ch ain of coupled neurons was more regular than that of an isolated cell. When noise was added to the synaptic coupling strengths, there was le ss hysteresis in the system and many of the bifurcations with smaller basins of attraction were eliminated, making the system even more regu lar. These results suggest that in populations of bursting neurons wit h reciprocal inhibition, the chaotic behavior found in single cells is suppressed. Copyright (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.