title: Noise-induced synchronization and coherence resonance of a Hodgkin-Huxley model of thermally sensitive neurons.
abstract: We study nontrivial effects of noise on synchronization and coherence of a chaotic Hodgkin-Huxley model of thermally sensitive neurons. We demonstrate that identical neurons which are not coupled but subjected to a common fluctuating input (Gaussian noise) can achieve complete synchronization when the noise amplitude is larger than a threshold. For nonidentical neurons, noise can induce phase synchronization. Noise enhances synchronization of weakly coupled neurons. We also find that noise enhances the coherence of the spike trains. A saddle point embedded in the chaotic attractor is responsible for these nontrivial noise-induced effects. Relevance of our results to biological information processing is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, University of Potsdam, PF 601553, 14415 Potsdam, Germany. cszhou@agnld.uni-potsdam.de
authors.forename: Changsong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Jürgen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kurths
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006358:Hot Temperature; D008954:Models, Biological; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009474:Neurons / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology*; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D013696:Temperature; D013997:Time Factors