Collective Synchronous Spiking in a Brain Network of Coupled Nonlinear Oscillators

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a brain network of coupled nonlinear oscillators can produce collective synchronized spiking activity through phase-amplitude coupling, offering a more efficient synchronization mechanism than existing models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel phase-amplitude coupling mechanism in nonlinear brain oscillators that explains hypersynchronous spiking beyond traditional phase or amplitude coupling models.

Findings

Phase-amplitude coupling leads to hypersynchronous spiking.

The model outperforms standard synchronization approaches.

Collective spiking emerges from subthreshold oscillations.

Abstract

A network of propagating nonlinear oscillatory modes (waves) in the human brain is shown to generate collectively synchronized spiking activity (hypersynchronous spiking) when both amplitude and phase coupling between modes are taken into account. The nonlinear behavior of the modes participating in the network are the result of the nonresonant dynamics of weakly evanescent cortical waves that, as shown recently, adhere to an inverse frequency-wave number dispersion relation when propagating through an inhomogeneous anisotropic media characteristic of the brain cortex. This description provides a missing link between simplistic models of synchronization in networks of small amplitude phase coupled oscillators and in networks built with various empirically fitted models of pulse or amplitude coupled spiking neurons. Overall the phase-amplitude coupling mechanism presented in the Letter shows significantly more efficient synchronization compared to current standard approaches and demonstrates an emergence of collective synchronized spiking from subthreshold oscillations that neither phase nor amplitude coupling alone are capable of explaining.