The phenomenon of acoustic communication in insects has been tackled broadly on two fronts; the mechanism of sound production with its associated behaviour; and the neurophysiological, anatomical and behavioural features of sound reception. The production of sound with a wide frequency band by bush crickets (Tettigonidae) and grasshoppers (Acrididae) is well known, and the mechanisms for its pr...

Synchronization and coherence of multiple oscillators is of general interest to many scientific and engineering disciplines, notably in biology and neurophysiology where chemical and cellular processes are commonly modeled by dynamical systems [20, 33]. These phenomena have been studied in various contexts, such as weak coupling [32], coupling with delays [7, 8] and oscillators subject to noisy...

* Martinez: Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114 (e-mail: [email protected]). Beaulieu: Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (e-mail: [email protected]). Gibbons: MIT, 100 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142 (e-mail: [email protected]). Pronovost: Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, Johns Hopkins ...

Using the Morris-Lecar model neuron with a type II parameter set and K(+)-channel noise, we investigate the interspike interval distribution as increasing levels of applied current drive the model through a subcritical Hopf bifurcation. Our goal is to provide a quantitative description of the distributions associated with spiking as a function of applied current. The model generates bursty spik...

Parameter estimation in multidimensional diffusion models with only one coordinate observed is highly relevant in many biological applications, but a statistically difficult problem. In neuroscience, the membrane potential evolution in single neurons can be measured at high frequency, but biophysical realistic models have to include the unobserved dynamics of ion channels. One such model is the...

We present a simple neuron model that shows a rich property in spite of the simple structure derived from the simplification of the Hindmarsh-Rose, the Morris-Lecar, and the Hodgkin-Huxley models. The model is a typical example whose characteristics can be discussed through the concept of potential with active areas. A potential function is able to provide a global landscape for dynamics of a m...

Anaesthetic agents such as propofol are known to have an effect on both synaptic and extra-synaptic receptors. On the one hand, binding of propofol to GABA A synaptic receptors induces a phasic inhibition, as opposed to tonic inhibition which seems mainly induced by binding to extra-synaptic receptors. On the second hand, under aneasthesia, an increase in amount of slow oscillations, mainly δ (...

40 The cardiac ganglion (CG) of Homarus americanus is a central pattern generator (CPG) that 41 consists of two oscillatory groups of neurons: the “small cells” (SCs) and the “large cells” (LCs). 42 We show that the SCs and LCs begin their bursts nearly simultaneously, but end their bursts at 43 variable phases. This variability contrasts with many other CPG systems in which phase is well44 mai...

Intensive experimental studies have shown that astrocytes are active partners in modulation of synaptic transmission. In the present research, we study neuron-astrocyte signaling using a biologically inspired model of one neuron synapsing one astrocyte. In this model, the firing dynamics of the neuron is described by the Morris-Lecar model and the Ca(2+) dynamics of a single astrocyte explained...