Section: New Results

Neural Fields Theory

Standing and travelling waves in a spherical brain model: the Nunez model revisited

Participants : Sid Visser [University of Nottingham, UK] , Rachel Nicks [University of Nottingham, UK] , Olivier Faugeras [Inria MathNeuro] , Stephen Coombes [University of Nottingham, UK] .

The Nunez model for the generation of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals is naturally described as a neural field model on a sphere with space-dependent delays. For simplicity, dynamical realisations of this model either as a damped wave equation or an integro-differential equation, have typically been studied in idealised one dimensional or planar settings. Here we revisit the original Nunez model to specifically address the role of spherical topology on spatio-temporal pattern generation. We do this using a mixture of Turing instability analysis, symmetric bifurcation theory, center manifold reduction and direct simulations with a bespoke numerical scheme. In particular we examine standing and travelling wave solutions using normal form computation of primary and secondary bifurcations from a steady state. Interestingly, we observe spatio-temporal patterns which have counterparts seen in the EEG patterns of both epileptic and schizophrenic brain conditions.

This work has been submitted for publication and is available as [27].