Coherence resonance in small-world networks of excitable cells

We investigate the effect of small-world networks on the phenomenon of coherence resonance of Hodgkin-Huxley neurons. It is found that increasing the randomness p of the network topology leads to an enhancement of temporal coherence and of spatial synchronization of the phenomenon. Especially, it is found that (1) spatial synchronization increases as characteristic path length shortens and (2) firing frequency increases as clustering coefficient decreases. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.