Mechanisms of intermittent state transitions in a coupled heterogeneous oscillator model of epilepsy.
We investigate the dynamic mechanisms underlying intermittent state transitions in a recently proposed neural mass model of epilepsy. A low dimensional model is constructed, which preserves two key features of the neural mass model, namely (i) coupling between oscillators and (ii) heterogeneous proximity of these oscillators to a bifurcation between distinct limit cycles. We demonstrate that state transitions due to intermittency occur in the abstract model. This suggests that there is a general bifurcation mechanism responsible for this behaviour and that this is independent of the precise form of the evolution equations. Such abstractions of neural mass models allow a deeper insight into underlying dynamic and physiological mechanisms, and also allow the more efficient exploration of large scale brain dynamics in disease.
Centre for Interdisciplinary Computational and Dynamical Analysis (CICADA), School of Mathematics, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. marcgoodfellow@gmail.com.
Marc
M
Goodfellow
Paul
P
Glendinning