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Pulse-Coupled Oscillators

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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

Definition

Pulse-coupled oscillators are intrinsically rhythmic circuit elements (oscillators) that are coupled via instantaneous interactions. Pulse (or pulsatile) coupling is only approximate because real world pulses cannot exert their effects instantaneously. Instead, a finite amount of time must elapse in order to produce an effect. However, the theoretical results for pulse-coupled oscillators generally apply to cases in which the input pulse exerts its effects during a time window of finite duration, provided that this duration is short compared to the period of the oscillation.

Detailed Description

This article focuses on neural oscillators, or intrinsically rhythmic nerve cells (neurons). Neurons are well suited to an analysis based on pulse coupling because they communicate via action potentials, also called spikes, which are all or nothing electrical signals that trigger a cascade of events leading to a somewhat slower, graded response in the target neuron. Coherent...

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References

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Further Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, LSU Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Carmen C. Canavier Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Carmen C. Canavier Ph.D.
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carmen C. Canavier Ph.D. .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Ranu Jung

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Canavier, C.C. (2014). Pulse-Coupled Oscillators. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_269-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_269-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7320-6

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