Propagating activity patterns in thalamic neuronal networks

Singular perturbation methods are used to construct traveling waves for mod els of thalamic networks. We rst study a single layer of mutually inhibitor y neurons, each of which has the ability to rebound after hyperpolarization . Two types of waves are constructed: smoothly propagating waves and lurchi ng waves which propagate in a saltatory fashion. We reduce the existence of these waves to simple boundary value problems or algebraic systems which a re solved using the computational package AUTO. The resulting calculations are compared to numerical simulations of the network. Finally, some comment s are made concerning two-layer networks.