Stability and bifurcations in neural fields with axonal delay and general connectivity

Fatihcan M. Atay and Axel Hutt

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Submission date: 30. Jun. 2003
published in: SIAM journal on applied mathematics, 65 (2005) 2, p. 644-666 
DOI number (of the published article): 10.1137/S0036139903430884
Bibtex
with the following different title: Stability and bifurcations in neural fields with finite propagation speed and general connectivity
MSC-Numbers: 92C20
Keywords and phrases: neural fields, delay, turing instability, traveling waves, spatio-temporal pattern formation

Abstract:
A stability analysis is presented for neural field equations in the presence of axonal delays and for a general class of connectivity kernels and synaptic properties. Sufficient conditions are given for the stability of equilibrium solutions. It is shown that the delays play a significant role in non-stationary bifurcations of equilibria, whereas the stationary bifurcations depend only on the connectivity kernel. In the case of non-stationary bifurcations, bounds are determined on the frequencies of the resulting oscillatory solutions. A perturbative scheme is used to calculate the types of bifurcations leading to spatial patterns, oscillations, and traveling waves. For high transmission speeds a simple method is derived that allows the determination of the bifurcation type by visual inspection of the Fourier transforms of the kernel and its first moment. Results are numerically illustrated on a class of neurologically plausible systems with combinations of Gaussian excitatory and inhibitory connections.