Effects of periodic stimulation on an overly activated neuronal circuit.

Motivated by therapeutic deep brain stimulation, we carried out a model study on the effects of periodic stimulation on an overly activated neuronal circuit. Our neuronal circuit, modeled as a small-world network of noisy Hodgkin-Huxley neurons, is controlled to undergo the mechanism of coherence resonance to exhibit spontaneous synchronization of neuronal firing. This state of energy burst is then directly modulated by a chain of electric pulses.

Dynamics of helping behavior and networks in a small world.

To investigate an effect of social interaction on the bystanders' intervention in emergency situations a rescue model was introduced which includes the effects of the victim's acquaintance with bystanders and those among bystanders from a network perspective. This model reproduces the experimental result that the helping rate (success rate in our model) tends to decrease although the number of bystanders k increases. And the interaction among homogeneous bystanders results in the emergence of hubs in a helping network.

Effect of spatially correlated noise on coherence resonance in a network of excitable cells.

We study the effect of spatially correlated noise on coherence resonance (CR) in a Watts-Strogatz small-world network of Fitz Hugh-Nagumo neurons, where the noise correlation decays exponentially with distance between neurons. It is found that CR is considerably improved just by a small fraction of long-range connections for an intermediate coupling strength. For other coupling strengths, an abrupt change in CR occurs following the drastic fracture of the clustered structures in the network.

Pattern formation in a two-dimensional array of oscillators with phase-shifted coupling.

We investigate the dynamics of a two-dimensional array of oscillators with phase-shifted coupling. Each oscillator is allowed to interact with its neighbors within a finite radius. The system exhibits various patterns including squarelike pinwheels, (anti)spirals with phase-randomized cores, and antiferro patterns embedded in (anti)spirals.

Topological determinants of protein unfolding rates.

For proteins that fold by two-state kinetics, the folding and unfolding processes are believed to be closely related to their native structures. In particular, folding and unfolding rates are influenced by the native structures of proteins. Thus, we focus on finding important topological quantities from a protein structure that determine its unfolding rate.

Wave formation by time delays in randomly coupled oscillators.

We study the dynamics of randomly coupled oscillators when interactions between oscillators are time delayed due to the finite and constant speed of coupling signals. Numerical simulations show that the time delays, proportional to the Euclidean distances between interacting oscillators, can induce near regular waves in addition to near in-phase synchronous oscillations even though oscillators are randomly coupled. We discuss the stability conditions for the wave states and the in-phase synchronous states.

Time-delayed spatial patterns in a two-dimensional array of coupled oscillators.

We investigated the effect of time delays on phase configurations in a set of two-dimensional coupled phase oscillators. Each oscillator is allowed to interact with its neighbors located within a finite radius, which serves as a control parameter in this study. It is found that distance-dependent time delays induce various patterns including traveling rolls, squarelike and rhombuslike patterns, spirals, and targets.

Square to stripe transition and superlattice patterns in vertically oscillated granular layers.

We investigated the physical mechanism for the pattern transition from square lattice to stripes, which appears in vertically oscillating granular layers. We present a continuum model to show that the transition depends on the competition between inertial force and local saturation of transport. By introducing multiple free-flight times, this model further enables us to analyze the formation of superlattices as well as hexagonal lattices