Entropy measurement of ordered patterns in neuronal network with repulsive coupling

Abstract

Traveling waves, standing waves, and spiral waves occur spontaneously in the brain neural network in some brain states. The occurrence of these ordered spatiotemporal patterns is often related to some neurological diseases. However, the mechanisms behind the generation of the ordered pattern are not fully understood. How to quantitatively describe the nature of these spatiotemporal patterns still needs further exploring. In order to solve these problems, the Hindmarsh-Rose neuron model is used to study the dynamic behavior of the two-dimensional (2D) neuronal network with double-coupling layer, which is composed of nearest-neighbor excitatory coupling and long-range repulsive coupling layers and evolves from an initial state with a random phase distribution. An improved cluster entropy is proposed to describe the spatiotemporal pattern of the neuronal network. The numerical simulation results show that the repulsive coupling can either promote the formation of ordered patterns or suppress the formation of ordered patterns. When the repulsive coupling strength and excitatory coupling strength are appropriately selected, the chaotic network can spontaneously generate single spiral wave, multiple spiral wave, traveling wave, the coexistence of spiral wave and others wave state, the coexistence of target wave and others wave state, the coexistence of traveling wave and standing wave, etc. The probability with which spiral wave and traveling wave occur reach 0.4555 and 0.1667 respectively. The probability with which target wave and other states co-occur, and the probability with which the traveling wave and the standing wave co-occur, are 0.0389 and 0.1056, respectively. These ordered wave patterns and chaotic states can be distinguished by using the proposed cluster entropy. When the repulsive coupling strength is large enough, the neuronal network is generally in chaotic state. It is found by calculating cluster entropy that a large cluster can appear in the neuronal network when the excitatory coupling strength and repulsive coupling strength are both weak. These results can conduce to understanding the self-organization phenomena occurring in the experiments and also to treating various neurological diseases.