THE BIFURCATION STRUCTURE OF FIRING PATTERN TRANSITIONS IN THE CHAY NEURONAL PACEMAKER MODEL

Different transitions of neuronal firing patterns are explored by the combination of experimental results, numerical simulation and bifurcation analysis. Three types of firing sequences with respect to extracellular calcium concentration ([Ca2+]o) were observed in experiments on neural pacemakers. In accordance with them, the corresponding transitions of neuronal firing patterns are surveyed by standard bifurcation analysis of the Chay model, where λn corresponds to different nerve fibers and VC is the dynamical parameter. The results are listed in this paper. Firstly, it is obtained that the transitions of periodic firing patterns from period-1 bursting to period-1 spiking without any bifurcation, from period-1 to -2 to -1 through a pair of period-doubling bifurcations and from period-1 to -2 to -1 through two pairs of period-doubling bifurcations. Secondly, one supercritical and two subcritical period-doubling bursting sequences with different appearances lead to chaos, respectively. Then the former tra...