Synchrony in neural networks: from physiology to pathology

In the heart, the spatiotemporal chaos of ventricular fibrillation represents a pathological perversion of normal coordinated firing. The contrary is true in the brain, where seizures represent pathological coordinated firing of many neurons. The authors have adapted cellular automata models employed in cardiac research to analyze transitions between desynchronized and synchronized firing. They have then explored these models in progressively more physiologically realistic incarnations