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NJIT Mathematical Biology Seminar

Thursday, February 16, 2006, 4:00 pm
Cullimore Hall 611
New Jersey Institute of Technology

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Reduced biophysical models that explore the roles of electrical coupling between neurons

Robert Clewley

Department of Mathematics
Cornell University

The role of electrical coupling between neurons with widely different intrinsic properties is not well understood. We systematically reduce a multi-compartment conductance-based model of electrically coupled neurons in the crustacean pyloric network that exhibits multi-stable modes of oscillation (principally, bursting vs. tonic firing). We investigate the low-dimensional organizing structure behind its multi-stability in a "critical regime" of the dynamics, and thus we can study the dependence of the system.s selection of network oscillation on initial conditions and parameters such as the electrical coupling strength. The software packages DSSRT and PyDSTool are used to simulate and analyze the dynamical models.