Transition from winnerless competition to synchronization in time-delayed neuronal motifs

¹ Department of Applied Mathematics and Physics, Science College, PLA University of Science and Technology Nanjing 211101, China
² Max-Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems - Nöthnitzer Straβe 38, D-01187 Dresden, Germany, EU
³ Research Center Jülich, Institute for Neuronscience and Medicine INM-2 - D-52425 Jülich, Germany, EU
⁴ Department of Physics, Southeast University - Nanjing 210096, China

^a zx_zx_zx_zx@tom.com

Received: 28 September 2011
Accepted: 24 January 2012

Abstract

The dynamics of brain functional motifs are studied. It is shown that different rhythms can occur in the motifs when time delay is taken into account. These rhythms include synchronization, winnerless competition (WLC) and “two plus one” (TPO). The main discovery is that the transition from WLC to synchronization can be induced simply by time delay. It is also concluded that some medium time delay is needed to achieve WLC in the realistic case. The motifs composed of heterogeneous neurons are also considered.