Delay-enhanced spatiotemporal order in coupled neuronal systems

In a network of noisy neuron oscillators with time-delayed coupling, we uncover a phenomenon of delay-enhanced spatiotemporal order. We find that time delay in the coupling can dramatically enhance the temporal coherence and spatial synchrony of the noise-induced spike trains. In addition, if the delay time is tuned to nearly match the intrinsic spiking period of the neuronal network, both the coherence and the synchrony reach maximum levels, demonstrating an interesting type of resonance phenomenon with delay. Such findings are shown to be robust to the change of the noise intensity and the rewiring probability of small-world network. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3528938]