Anticipated synchronization induced by cooperations between different phase responses for excitatory synapse and autapse

Abstract Anticipated synchronization (AS), a counterintuitive and interesting phenomenon in which the response of a receiver system precedes the stimulation of a sender system, exists in various nonlinear systems, including the nervous system. In the present letter, inspired by the fact that the pyramidal neurons, covering 80% of the brain cortex, have excitatory autapses, AS is reproduced in a receiver pyramidal neuron which receives excitatory coupling from a receiver neuron and has an excitatory autapse, and in the receiver network with excitatory autapses. The excitatory synapse with fast decay exhibits a counterintuitive phenomenon of inducing a spike delay, whereas the excitatory autapse with fast decay induces an advanced spike. The autapse with a middle degree of the advance effect can first induce the spike of the receiver in advance with respect to that of the sender and then dynamically balance the delayed effect of the synapse, resulting in AS. The results present novel conditions and dynamical mechanisms for AS, which may be a function of the brain cortex.