Oscillations and waves in the models of interactive neural populations

The dynamics of activity in interactive neural populations is simulated by the networks of Wilson–Cowan oscillators. Two extreme cases of connection architectures in the networks are considered: (1) 1D and 2D regular and homogeneous grids with local connections and (2) sparse random coupling. Propagating waves in the network have been found under the stationary external input and the regime of partial synchronization has been obtained for the periodic input. It has been shown that in the case of random coupling about 60% of neural populations demonstrate oscillatory activity and some of these oscillations are synchronous. The role of different types of dynamics in information processing is discussed. In particular, we discuss the regime of partial synchronization in the context of cortical microcircuits.