The influence of autapse on synchronous firing in small-world neural networks.

The synchronization of the nervous system is strongly related to diseases such as Parkinson's, epilepsy, and schizophrenia. Given that the existence of autapse has been proved experimentally, the influence of autapse on the synchronization in a neural network is studied numerically. The results show that increasing coupling intensity could destroy the synchronization of the neural firing pattern, and reduce the firing rate in the network. Especially, an inhibition zone, in which the neural firing is inhibited completely, exists for changes of both coupling intensity and time delay in all types of autapses. As a key factor for different types of autapses, the transmission time delay influences the synchronization complicatedly, i.e., increasing time delay could modulate synchronization for different types of autapse and parameter regions. The theoretical results in this paper shed some light on the study about the mechanism of neural synchronization. • Autapse's existence determines the synchronization in SW neural network. • Time delay influences the synchronization complicatedly, instead of monotonously. • An inhibition zone for autaptic parameter could be found for all types of autapses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]