Counting and classifying attractors in high dimensional dynamical systems

J Theor Biol. 1996 Dec 7;183(3):269-84. doi: 10.1006/jtbi.1996.0220.

Abstract

Randomly connected Boolean networks have been used as mathematical models of neural, genetic, and immune systems. A key quantity of such networks is the number of basins of attraction in the state space. The number of basins of attraction changes as a function of the size of the network, its connectivity and its transition rules. In discrete networks, a simple count of the number of attractors does not reveal the combinatorial structure of the attractors. These points are illustrated in a reexamination of dynamics in a class of random Boolean networks considered previously by Kauffman. We also consider comparisons between dynamics in discrete networks and continuous analogues. A continuous analogue of a discrete network may have a different number of attractors for many different reasons. Some attractors in discrete networks may be associated with unstable dynamics, and several different attractors in a discrete network may be associated with a single attractor in the continuous case. Special problems in determining attractors in continuous systems arise when there is aperiodic dynamics associated with quasiperiodicity of deterministic chaos.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Computer Simulation*
  • Models, Biological
  • Models, Statistical*
  • Nonlinear Dynamics*