Impacts of hybrid synapses on the noise-delayed decay in scale-free neural networks

• Published in: Chaos, solitons and fractals solitons and fractals, 2014-09, Vol.66, p.1-8
• Main Author: Yilmaz, Ergin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0960-0779; 1873-2887
• DOI: 10.1016/j.chaos.2014.05.001

•We investigate the NDD phenomenon in a hybrid scale-free network.•Electrical synapses are more impressive on the emergence of NDD.•Electrical synapses are more efficient in suppressing of the NDD.•Average degree has two opposite effects on the appearance time of the first spike. We study the phenomenon of noise-delayed decay in a scale-free neural network consisting of excitable FitzHugh–Nagumo neurons. In contrast to earlier works, where only electrical synapses are considered among neurons, we primarily examine the effects of hybrid synapses on the noise-delayed decay in this study. We show that the electrical synaptic coupling is more impressive than the chemical coupling in determining the appearance time of the first-spike and more efficient on the mitigation of the delay time in the detection of a suprathreshold input signal. We obtain that hybrid networks including inhibitory chemical synapses have higher signal detection capabilities than those of including excitatory ones. We also find that average degree exhibits two different effects, which are strengthening and weakening the noise-delayed decay effect depending on the noise intensity.