Oscillations in an Excitable System with Time-Delays

Transition from excitability to asymptotic periodicity in an excitable system, modeled by the FitzHugh–Nagumo equations, with multiple time-delays, is analyzed. It is demonstrated that, for intermediate time-lags, the system has two coexisting attractors, a hyperbolic stable fixed point and a stable limit cycle. The fixed point is destabilized via subcritical Hopf bifurcation for much larger values of the time-lags.