Influence of noise on dynamics of coupled bursters

The influence of white noise on the dynamics of a delayed electrically coupled pair of Hidmarsh-Rose bursting neurons is studied. In particular a simple method to predict the intensity of noise that can destabilize the quiescent state is proposed and compared with numerical computations. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that quite small noise completely destroys the exact synchronization of bursting dynamics, and a qualitative explanation of this effect is discussed.