Reduction theories elucidate the origins of complex biological rhythms generated by interacting delay-induced oscillations

PLoS One. 2011;6(11):e26497. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026497. Epub 2011 Nov 7.

Abstract

Time delay is known to induce sustained oscillations in many biological systems such as electroencephalogram (EEG) activities and gene regulations. Furthermore, interactions among delay-induced oscillations can generate complex collective rhythms, which play important functional roles. However, due to their intrinsic infinite dimensionality, theoretical analysis of interacting delay-induced oscillations has been limited. Here, we show that the two primary methods for finite-dimensional limit cycles, namely, the center manifold reduction in the vicinity of the Hopf bifurcation and the phase reduction for weak interactions, can successfully be applied to interacting infinite-dimensional delay-induced oscillations. We systematically derive the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation and the phase equation without delay for general interaction networks. Based on the reduced low-dimensional equations, we demonstrate that diffusive (linearly attractive) coupling between a pair of delay-induced oscillations can exhibit nontrivial amplitude death and multimodal phase locking. Our analysis provides unique insights into experimentally observed EEG activities such as sudden transitions among different phase-locked states and occurrence of epileptic seizures.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Biological Clocks*
  • Electroencephalography
  • Epilepsy / etiology
  • Humans
  • Models, Biological*
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Nonlinear Dynamics