2001/08/24 by Osame Kinouchi, Kinouchi, Osame
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Molecular Communication and Nanonetworks #Neural dynamics and brain function #Neuroscience and Neural Engineering #Quantitative Biology (q-bio) #cond-mat.dis-nn #q-bio
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0108404
8 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2001/08/24 · openalex publication_date 2001/08/24 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Receptor cells with electrically coupled axons can improve both their input sensitivity and dynamical range due to collective non-linear wave properties. This mechanism is illustrated by a network of axons modeled by excitable maps subjected to a Poison signal process with rate r. We find that, in a network of N cells, the amplification factor A (number of cells excited by a single signal event) decreases smoothly from A= O(N) to A=1 as r increases, preventing saturation in a self-organized way and leading to a Weber-Fechner law behavior. This self-limited amplification mechanism is generic for excitable media and could be implemented in other biological contexts and artificial sensor devices.