AVITABILE , Daniele

Neural field models are nonlinear integro-differential equations for the evolution of neuronal activity, and they are a prototypical large-scale, coarse-grained neuronal model in continuum cortices. Neural fields are often simulated heuristically and, in spite of their popularity in mathematical neuroscience, their numerical analysis is not yet...

We study localized patterns in an exact mean-field description of a spatially-extended network of quadratic integrate-and-fire (QIF) neurons. We investigate conditions for the existence and stability of localized solutions, so-called bumps, and give an analytic estimate for the parameter range where these solutions exist in parameter space,...

We revisit elliptic bursting dynamics from the viewpoint of torus canard solutions. We show that at the transition to and from elliptic burstings, classical or mixed-type torus canards can appear, the difference between the two being the fast subsystem bifurcation that they approach, saddle-node of cycles for the former and subcritical Hopf for...

Canards are special solutions to ordinary differential equations that follow invariant repelling slow manifolds for long time intervals. In realistic biophysical single-cell models, canards are responsible for several complex neural rhythms observed experimentally, but their existence and role in spatially extended systems is largely...

We show that during the transition from and to elliptic burstings both classical and mixed-type torus canards appear in a Wilson-Cowan type neuronal network model, as well as in its corresponding mean-field framework. We show numerically the overlap between the network and mean-field dynamics. We comment on that mixed-type torus canards result...

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We report a detailed analysis on the emergence of bursting in a recently developed neural mass model that takes short-term synaptic plasticity into account. The one being used here is particularly important, as it represents an exact meanfield limit of synaptically coupled quadratic integrate & fire neurons, a canonical model for type I...

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Neural field models are commonly used to describe wave propagation and bump attractors at a tissue level inthe brain. Although motivated by biology, these models are phenomenological in nature. They are built on theassumption that the neural tissue operates in a near synchronous regime, and hence, cannot account for changesin the underlying...

From the action potentials of neurons and cardiac cells to the amplification of calcium signals in oocytes, excitability is a hallmark of many biological signalling processes. In recent years, excitability in single cells has been related to multiple-timescale dynamics through canards, special solutions which determine the effective thresholds...

Inner hair cells (IHCs) are excitable sensory cells in the inner ear that encode acoustic information. Before the onset of hearing IHCs fire calcium-based action potentials that trigger transmitter release onto developing spiral ganglion neurones. There is accumulating experimental evidence that these spontaneous firing patterns are associated...

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We present a rigorous framework for the local analysis of canards and slow passages through bifurcations in a wide class of infinite-dimensional dynamical systems with time-scale separation. The framework is applicable to models where an infinite-dimensional dynamical system for the fast variables is coupled to a finite-dimensional dynamical...

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We study localised activity patterns in neural field equations posed on the Euclidean plane; such models are commonly used to describe the coarse-grained activity of large ensembles of cortical neurons in a spatially continuous way. We employ matrix-free Newton-Krylov solvers and perform numerical continuation of localised patterns directly on...

International audience

We study localised activity patterns in neural field equations posed on the Euclidean plane; such models are commonly used to describe the coarse-grained activity of large ensembles of cortical neurons in a spatially continuous way. We employ matrix-free Newton-Krylov solvers and perform numerical continuation of localised patterns directly on...

Hypercholesterolaemia provokes reactive oxygen species (ROS) increase and is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) development. We previously showed that circulating miR-33a/b expression levels were up-regulated in children with familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH). miR-33a/b control cholesterol homoeostasis and recently miR-33b...