A novel tunable neural oscillator for biological rhythmic behaviors

Autonomic oscillatory activities exist in almost every living thing and most of them are produced by rhythmic activities of the corresponding neural system. This paper proposes a neural oscillator based on the control of a Schmitt Trigger. The oscillator implements 3 neuron cells and 4 synapse circuits, and integrates them into a compact neural network with a source neuron driving two oscillating cells, which inhibit each other. The proposed neural oscillator, with tunable duty cycle and frequency, is simulated in Pspice 16 using 1.2um CMOS process.