Synchronization of two electrically coupled inspiratory pacemaker neurons

Synchronization is considered to be a crucial mechanism that maintains respiratory rhythm. For understanding the effect of electrical coupling on the transition of the firing patterns and synchronization, we coupled two inspiratory pacemaker neurons together, and studied various synchronous behaviors between them. We firstly compared the bifurcation diagrams between the coupled neurons and single neuron, and found that the coupled neurons had a more complicated bifurcation mode. By increasing the coupling strength, the regular variation of phase differences was illustrated so that asynchronous and some synchronous states could be observed. These synchronous states were also shown in detail by phase portraits and firing series. In addition, we explored the ranges of different synchronous states, which attributed to different ranges of membrane capacitance and coupling strength.

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