Long-range connections are crucial for synchronization transition in a computational model of Drosophila brain dynamics

Abstract

The synchronization transition type has been the focus of attention in recent years because it is associated with many functional characteristics of the brain. In this paper, the synchronization transition in neural networks with sleep-related biological drives in Drosophila is investigated. An electrical synaptic neural network is established to research the difference between the synchronization transition of the network during sleep and wake, in which neurons regularly spike during sleep and chaotically spike during wake. The synchronization transition curves are calculated mainly using the global instantaneous order parameters S. The underlying mechanisms and types of synchronization transition during sleep are different from those during wake. During sleep, regardless of the network structure, a frustrated (discontinuous) transition can be observed. Moreover, the phenomenon of quasi periodic partial synchronization is observed in ring-shaped regular network with and without random long-range connections. As the network becomes dense, the synchronization of the network only needs to slightly increase the coupling strength g. While during wake, the synchronization transition of the neural network is very dependent on the network structure, and three mechanisms of synchronization transition have emerged: discontinuous synchronization (explosive synchronization and frustrated synchronization), and continuous synchronization. The random long-range connections is the main topological factor that plays an important role in the resulting synchronization transition. Furthermore, similarities and differences are found by comparing synchronization transition research for the Hodgkin-Huxley neural network in the beta-band and gammma-band, which can further improve the synchronization phase transition research of biologically motivated neural networks. A complete research framework can also be used to study coupled nervous systems, which can be extended to general coupled dynamic systems.