Controlling self-sustained spiking activity by adding or removing one network link

¹ Department of Physics, East China Normal University - Shanghai, 200062, China
² Department of Physics and Centre for Computational Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore 117546, Singapore
³ Centre for Phononics and Thermal Energy Science, Department of Physics, Tongji University 200092, Shanghai, China
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Neuroscience Institute, and Center for Behavioral Neuroscience Georgia State University - Atlanta, GA 30032, USA

^(a) zhliu@phy.ecnu.edu.cn

Received: 1 March 2013
Accepted: 22 May 2013

Abstract

Being able to control the neuronal spiking activity in specific brain regions is central to a treatment scheme in several brain disorders such as epileptic seizures, mental depression, and Parkinson's diseases. Here, we present an approach for controlling self-sustained oscillations by adding or removing one directed network link in coupled neuronal oscillators, in contrast to previous approaches of adding stimuli or noise. We find that such networks can exhibit a variety of activity patterns such as on-off switch, sustained spikes, and short-term spikes. We derive the condition for a specific link to be the controller of the on-off effect. A qualitative analysis is provided to facilitate the understanding of the mechanism for spiking activity by adding one link. Our findings represent the first report on generating spike activity with the addition of only one directed link to a network and provide a deeper understanding of the microscopic roots of self-sustained spiking.