Pulse propagation sustained by noise in arrays of bistable electronic circuits

Patterned Brain Stimulation, What a Framework with Rhythmic and Noisy Components Might Tell Us about Recovery Maximization

Brain stimulation is having remarkable impact on clinical neurology. Brain stimulation can modulate neuronal activity in functionally segregated circumscribed regions of the human brain. Polarity, frequency, and noise specific stimulation can induce specific manipulations on neural activity. In contrast to neocortical stimulation, deep-brain stimulation has become a tool that can dramatically improve the impact clinicians can possibly have on movement disorders. In contrast, neocortical brain stimulation is proving to be remarkably susceptible to intrinsic brain-states. Although evidence is accumulating that brain stimulation can facilitate recovery processes in patients with cerebral stroke, the high variability of results impedes successful clinical implementation. Interestingly, recent data in healthy subjects suggests that brain-state dependent patterned stimulation might help resolve some of the intrinsic variability found in previous studies. In parallel, other studies suggest that noisy “stochastic resonance” (SR)-like processes are a non-negligible component in non-invasive brain stimulation studies. The hypothesis developed in this manuscript is that stimulation patterning with noisy and oscillatory components will help patients recover from stroke related deficits more reliably. To address this hypothesis we focus on two factors common to both neural computation (intrinsic variables) as well as brain stimulation (extrinsic variables): noise and oscillation. We review diverse theoretical and experimental evidence that demonstrates that subject-function specific brain-states are associated with specific oscillatory activity patterns. These states are transient and can be maintained by noisy processes. The resulting control procedures can resemble homeostatic or SR processes. In this context we try to extend awareness for inter-individual differences and the use of individualized stimulation in the recovery maximization of stroke patients.

Signal transmission by vibrational resonance in one-way coupled bistable systems

Low-frequency signal transmission in one-way coupled bistable systems subject to a high-frequency force is studied. Two cases including the high-frequency force on all sites (case 1) and only on the first site (case 2) are considered. In these two cases, vibrational resonance induced by the high-frequency force can play an active role to effectively improve the signal transmission, and undamped signal transmission can be found in a broad parameter region. The combinative action of injected low-frequency signal, high-frequency driving, and coupling is of importance. Our findings suggest that high-frequency signal could be properly used in low-frequency signal transmission, and especially the implementation of high-frequency force simply on the first site for case 2 is meaningful for its simplicity and high efficiency.

Modeling noise-induced resonance in an excitable system: an alternative approach

Recently, it has been observed [Md. Nurujjaman, Phy. Rev. E 80, 015201(R) (2009)] that in an excitable system, one can maintain noise-induced coherency in the coherence resonance by blocking the destructive effect of the noise on the system at higher noise level. This phenomenon of constant coherence resonance (CCR) cannot be explained by the existing way of simulation of the model equations of an excitable system with added noise. In this paper, we have proposed a general model which explains the noise-induced resonance phenomenon CCR as well as coherence resonance (CR) and stochastic resonance (SR). The simulation has been carried out considering the basic mechanism of noise-induced resonance phenomena: noise only perturbs the system control parameter to excite coherent oscillations, taking proper precautions so that the destructive effect of noise does not affect the system. In this approach, the CR has been obtained from the interference between the system output and noise and the SR has been obtained by adding noise and a subthreshold signal. This also explains the observation of the frequency shift of coherent oscillations in the CCR with noise level.

Coherence resonance in a unijunction transistor relaxation oscillator

The phenomenon of coherence resonance is investigated in an unijunction transistor relaxation oscillator and quantified by estimating the normal variance (NV). Depending on the measuring points, two types of NV curves have been obtained. We have observed that the degradations in coherency at higher noise amplitudes in our system is probably the result of direct interference of coherent oscillations and the stochastic perturbation. Degradation of coherency may be minimal if this direct interference of noise and coherent oscillations is eliminated.

Noise effects on gap wave propagation in a nonlinear discrete LC transmission line

We report here the results of numerical investigation of noise effects on the propagation in a nonlinear waveguide modeled by a discrete electrical line. Considering a periodic signal of frequency exceeding the natural cutoff frequency of this system, we show that noise can be used to trigger soliton generation in the medium. Besides the classical stochastic resonance signature exhibited by each oscillator of the network, our simulation results reveal in particular that the signal-to-noise ratio remains almost constant in the whole network for an appropriate amount of noise. This interesting feature insures for the generated solitons a quality preserved propagation along the network.

Ghost stochastic resonance with distributed inputs in pulse-coupled electronic neurons

We study experimentally the phenomenon of ghost stochastic resonance in pulse-coupled excitable systems, for input signals distributed among different elements. Specifically, two excitable electronic circuits are driven by different sinusoidal signals that produce periodic spikes at distinct frequencies. Their outputs are sent to a third circuit that processes these spiking signals and is additionally perturbed by noise. When the input signals are harmonics of a certain fundamental (that is not present in the inputs) the processing circuit exhibits, for an optimal amount of noise, a resonant response at the frequency of the missing fundamental (ghost frequency). In contrast with the standard case in which the signals being directly integrated are sinusoidal, this behavior relies here on a coincidence-detection mechanism. When the input signals are homogeneously shifted in frequency, the processing circuit responds with pulse packages composed of spikes at a frequency that depends linearly on the frequency shift. Expressions for the dependence of the package period and duration on the frequency shift and spike width, respectively, are obtained. These results provide an experimental verification of a recently proposed mechanism of binaural pitch perception.

Coupling-mediated ghost resonance in mutually injected lasers

We experimentally and numerically study the phenomenon of ghost resonance in coupled nonlinear systems. Two mutually injected semiconductor lasers are externally perturbed in their pump currents by two respective periodic signals of different frequencies f(1) and f(2). For small amplitudes of the external modulations, the two laser intensities display synchronized optical pulses, in the form of dropout events occurring at irregular times. By adjusting the amplitude and frequencies of the driving signals, the system exhibits a ghost resonance in the dropout appearance at a frequency f(r) not present in the distributed inputs.

Front dynamics in an oscillatory bistable Belousov-Zhabotinsky chemical reaction

We observe breathing front dynamics which select three distinct types of bistable patterns in the 2:1 resonance regime of the periodically forced oscillatory Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. We measure the curvature-driven shrinking of a circular domain R approximately t(1/2) at forcing frequencies below a specific value, and show that the fast time scale front oscillations (breathing) drive this slow time scale shrinking. Above a specific frequency, we observe fronts of higher curvature grow instead of shrink and labyrinth patterns form. Just below the transition frequency is a relatively narrow range of frequencies where the curvature-driven coarsening is balanced by a competing front interaction, which leads to a pattern of localized structures. The length scale of the localized structure and labyrinth patterns is set by the front interactions.

Noise-induced excitability in oscillatory media

A noise-induced phase transition to excitability is reported in oscillatory media with FitzHugh-Nagumo dynamics. This transition takes place via a noise-induced stabilization of a deterministically unstable fixed point of the local dynamics, while the overall phase-space structure of the system is maintained. Spatial coupling is required to prevent oscillations through suppression of fluctuations (via clustering in the case of local coupling). Thus, the joint action of coupling and noise leads to a different type of phase transition and results in a stabilization of the system. The resulting regime is shown to display characteristic traits of excitable media, such as stochastic resonance and wave propagation. This effect thus allows the transmission of signals through an otherwise globally oscillating medium.

Doubly stochastic coherence via noise-induced symmetry in bistable neural models

The generation of coherent dynamics due to noise in an activator-inhibitor system describing bistable neural dynamics is investigated. We show that coherence can be induced in deterministically asymmetric regimes via symmetry restoration by multiplicative noise, together with the action of additive noise which induces jumps between the two stable steady states. The phenomenon is thus doubly stochastic, because both noise sources are necessary. This effect can be understood analytically in the frame of a small-noise expansion and is confirmed experimentally in a nonlinear electronic circuit. Finally, we show that spatial coupling enhances this coherent behavior in a form of system-size coherence resonance.