Effects of axonal time delay on synchronization and wave formation in sparsely coupled neuronal oscillators

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2007 Nov;76(5 Pt 2):056206. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.76.056206. Epub 2007 Nov 8.

Abstract

We investigate the effects of axonal time delay when the neuronal oscillators are coupled by sparse and random connections. Using phase-reduced models with general coupling functions, we show that a small fraction of connections with time delay can destabilize synchronous states and induce near-regular wave states. An order parameter is introduced to characterize those states. We analyze the systems using mean-field-type approximation.