Variety of synchronous regimes in neuronal ensembles.

We consider a Hodgkin-Huxley-type model of oscillatory activity in neurons of the snail Helix pomatia. This model has a distinctive feature: It demonstrates multistability in oscillatory and silent modes that is typical for the thalamocortical neurons. A single neuron cell can demonstrate a variety of oscillatory activity: Regular and chaotic spiking and bursting behavior. We study collective phenomena in small and large arrays of nonidentical cells coupled by models of electrical and chemical synapses. Two single elements coupled by electrical coupling show different types of synchronous behavior, in particular in-phase and antiphase synchronous regimes. In an ensemble of three inhibitory synaptically coupled elements, the phenomenon of sequential synchronous dynamics is observed. We study the synchronization phenomena in the chain of nonidentical neurons at different oscillatory behavior coupled with electrical and chemical synapses. Various regimes of phase synchronization are observed: (i) Synchronous regular and chaotic spiking; (ii) synchronous regular and chaotic bursting; and (iii) synchronous regular and chaotic bursting with different numbers of spikes inside the bursts. We detect and study the effect of collective synchronous burst generation due to the cluster formation and the oscillatory death.