Talk abstract:

Effect of Noise on the Emergent Collective Behaviour
of Diffusively Coupled Biological Oscillators

Gerda de Vries

Department of Mathematical Sciences
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
devries@math.ualberta.ca
www.math.ualberta.ca/~devries

I will consider a representative model for bursting electrical activity, and choose a parameter regime in which the fast subsystem is mono-stable so that individual, isolated cells are tonically spiking. Weak diffusive coupling of these cells has been shown to induce stable bursting behaviour. With stronger coupling, the cells revert to tonic spiking. The addition of noise dramatically increases, via a stochastic resonance-like phenomenon, the coupling range over which bursting is seen.

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1998-1999 Mathematics in Biology