Structure and control of self-sustained target waves in excitable small-world networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates self-sustained target wave oscillations in excitable small-world networks, introducing a novel analysis method that reveals underlying structures and enables highly efficient control of these oscillations.

Contribution

The paper proposes the DPAD method for analyzing oscillatory networks, uncovering hidden structures and enabling precise control of target wave oscillations.

Findings

DPAD method effectively reveals oscillation sources and wave paths.

Self-organized structures support target wave oscillations.

Oscillatory patterns can be controlled with high efficiency.

Abstract

Small-world networks describe many important practical systems among which neural networks consisting of excitable nodes are the most typical ones. In this paper we study self-sustained oscillations of target waves in excitable small-world networks. A novel dominant phase-advanced driving (DPAD) method, which is generally applicable for analyzing all oscillatory complex networks consisting of nonoscillatory nodes, is proposed to reveal the self-organized structures supporting this type of oscillations. The DPAD method explicitly explores the oscillation sources and wave propagation paths of the systems, which are otherwise deeply hidden in the complicated patterns of randomly distributed target groups. Based on the understanding of the self-organized structure, the oscillatory patterns can be controlled with extremely high efficiency.