SYNCHRONIZATION OF COUPLED NEURAL OSCILLATORS AND ITS USE IN PATTERN RECOGNITION

Abstract

Cyclical activities are basic characteristics of all living organisms. Neurobiologists have identified two basic types of mechanisms. The first type is the single neuron that exhibits oscillations in its pulse train, to which biologists refer as the "pacemaker". The other type is an interconnected network of neurons, where oscillations are obtained by virtue of interconnections and/or cell properties. A single neuron often possesses membrane properties that are responsible for the generation of oscillations. When coupled with other neurons, oscillations with varying properties depending on the type of interconnection can be generated. Recently, synchronization of oscillations in a neural network has attracted considerable attention. It has been proposed that synchronization can carry out the following tasks: !.Phase-locking in response to global coherence in the stimuli.

2.Segmentation of incoherent stimuli in low level vision via de-synchronization.

3.Feature binding i.e. connecting different attributes of the same object, which appear in the mixed input.