title: Winnerless competition between sensory neurons generates chaos: A possible mechanism for molluscan hunting behavior.
abstract: In the presence of prey, the marine mollusk Clione limacina exhibits search behavior, i.e., circular motions whose plane and radius change in a chaotic-like manner. We have formulated a dynamical model of the chaotic hunting behavior of Clione based on physiological in vivo and in vitro experiments. The model includes a description of the action of the cerebral hunting interneuron on the receptor neurons of the gravity sensory organ, the statocyst. A network of six receptor model neurons with Lotka-Volterra-type dynamics and nonsymmetric inhibitory interactions has no simple static attractors that correspond to winner take all phenomena. Instead, the winnerless competition induced by the hunting neuron displays hyperchaos with two positive Lyapunov exponents. The origin of the chaos is related to the interaction of two clusters of receptor neurons that are described with two heteroclinic loops in phase space. We hypothesize that the chaotic activity of the receptor neurons can drive the complex behavior of Clione observed during hunting. (c) 2002 American Institute of Physics.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093-0402Grupo de Neurocomputacion Biologica (GNB), Dpto. de Ingenieria Informatica, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Pablo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Varona
authors.forename: Mikhail I.
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Rabinovich
authors.forename: Allen I.
authors.initials: AI
authors.lastname: Selverston
authors.forename: Yuri I.
authors.initials: YI
authors.lastname: Arshavsky