Coupling and Feedback Effects in Excitable Systems: Anticipated Synchronization

This paper reviews our recent work on the synchronization of excitable systems in a master–slave configuration and when the slave system includes a delayed self-coupling term. Particularly, we address the existence of the so-called anticipated synchronization, i.e. a dynamical regime in which the slave system is able to reproduce in advance the evolution of the master. This is most remarkable since the anticipated synchronization appears even when the excitable spikes are induced by random terms, such as white noise. After providing a short review of the general theory of synchronization as well as the main features of excitable systems, we present numerical and experimental results in coupled excitable systems of the FitzHugh–Nagumo type driven by different types of noise. The experiments have been done in electronic implementations of the model equations. We present the conditions (values of the coupling intensity and delay time) for which the anticipated synchronization regime is a stable one and show that it is possible to increase the anticipation time by using a cascade of several coupled systems. We use a particular limit of the FitzHugh–Nagumo system, as well as a simple excitable model, to give evidence that the physical reason for the existence of anticipated synchronization is the lowering of the excitability threshold of the slave due to the coupling. Finally, we propose a hypothesis for a possible explanation of the zero-lag synchronization observed in some real neuron systems.