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 oscillations 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 with an even number of neurons and were similar to those observed in a single isolated cell, although the organization of the behavior of a chain of coupled neurons was more regular than that of an isolated cell. When noise was added to the synaptic coupling strengths, there was less hysteresis in the system and many of the bifurcations with smaller basins of attraction were eliminated, making the system even more regular. These results suggest that in populations of bursting neurons with reciprocal inhibition, the chaotic behavior found in single cells is suppressed. Copyright © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.