The influence of autapse on synchronous firing in small-world neural networks

The synchronization of the nervous system is strongly related to diseases such as Parkinson's, epilepsy, and schizophrenia. Given that the existence of autapse has been proved experimentally, the influence of autapse on the synchronization in a neural network is studied numerically. The results show that increasing coupling intensity could destroy the synchronization of the neural firing pattern, and reduce the firing rate in the network. Especially, an inhibition zone, in which the neural firing is inhibited completely, exists for changes of both coupling intensity and time delay in all types of autapses. As a key factor for different types of autapses, the transmission time delay influences the synchronization complicatedly, i.e., increasing time delay could modulate synchronization for different types of autapse and parameter regions. The theoretical results in this paper shed some light on the study about the mechanism of neural synchronization. (C) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The synchronization of the nervous system is closely related to diseases. This study investigates the influence of autapse on neural network synchronization and shows that increasing coupling intensity can disrupt the synchronization of neural firing pattern. The transmission time delay is a key factor that complicates the synchronization process for different types of autapses.