CONNECTIVITY AND THE DYNAMICS OF INTEGRATE-AND-FIRE NEURAL NETWORKS

The dynamics following periodic stimulation at a single point with uniform initial conditions, of an excitatory network of identical integrate-and-fire neurons is investigated as a function of interconnectivity. It is shown that propagating spiral waves as well as other forms of self-maintained activity can arise provided that the probability of neural interconnectivity is an exponentially decreasing function of interneuronal distance. Other forms of connectivity, e.g. nearest neighbor, step function, do not produce spirals.