Distributed nonlocal feedback delays may destabilize fronts in neural fields, distributed transmission delays do not.

The spread of activity in neural populations is a well-known phenomenon. To understand the propagation speed and the stability of stationary fronts in neural populations, the present work considers a neural field model that involves intracortical and cortico-cortical synaptic interactions. This includes distributions of axonal transmission speeds and nonlocal feedback delays as well as general classes of synaptic interactions. The work proves the spectral stability of standing and traveling fronts subject to general transmission speeds for large classes of spatial interactions and derives conditions for the front instabilities subjected to nonlocal feedback delays. Moreover, it turns out that the uniqueness of the stationary traveling fronts guarantees its exponential stability for vanishing feedback delay. Numerical simulations complement the analytical findings.