Biomedical subjects

Gennady S Cymbalyuk

Publications and source records attributed to Gennady S Cymbalyuk.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Bifurcation of synchronous oscillations into torus in a system of two reciprocally inhibitory silicon neurons: experimental observation and modeling.

Oscillatory activity in the central nervous system is associated with various functions, like motor control, memory formation, binding, and attention. Quasiperiodic oscillations are rarely discussed in the neurophysiological literature yet they may play a role in the nervous system both during normal function and disease. Here we use a physical system and a model to explore scenarios for how quasiperiodic oscillations might arise in neuronal networks. An oscillatory system of two mutually inhibitory neuronal units is a ubiquitous network module found in nervous systems and is called a half-center oscillator. Previously we created a half-center oscillator of two identical oscillatory silicon (analog Very Large Scale Integration) neurons and developed a mathematical model describing its dynamics. In the mathematical model, we have shown that an in-phase limit cycle becomes unstable through a subcritical torus bifurcation. However, the existence of this torus bifurcation in experimental silicon two-neuron system was not rigorously demonstrated or investigated. Here we demonstrate the torus predicted by the model for the silicon implementation of a half-center oscillator using complex time series analysis, including bifurcation diagrams, mapping techniques, correlation functions, amplitude spectra, and correlation dimensions, and we investigate how the properties of the quasiperiodic oscillations depend on the strengths of coupling between the silicon neurons. The potential advantages and disadvantages of quasiperiodic oscillations (torus) for biological neural systems and artificial neural networks are discussed.

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PubMed2004

A multiconductance silicon neuron with biologically matched dynamics.

We have designed, fabricated, and tested an analog integrated-circuit architecture to implement the conductance-based dynamics that model the electrical activity of neurons. The dynamics of this architecture are in accordance with the Hodgkin-Huxley formalism, a widely exploited, biophysically plausible model of the dynamics of living neurons. Furthermore the architecture is modular and compact in size so that we can implement networks of silicon neurons, each of desired complexity, on a single integrated circuit. We present in this paper a six-conductance silicon-neuron implementation, and characterize it in relation to the Hodgkin-Huxley formalism. This silicon neuron incorporates both fast and slow ionic conductances, which are required to model complex oscillatory behaviors (spiking, bursting, subthreshold oscillations).

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PubMed2003

Heartbeat control in leeches. I. Constriction pattern and neural modulation of blood pressure in intact animals.

Two tubular hearts propel blood through the closed circulatory system of the medicinal leech. The hearts are myogenic but are driven by a centrally generated motor pattern that controls heart rate and intersegmental coordination. In two consecutive papers, we address the question of how the motor pattern is translated into the pattern of diastole and systole of leech hearts. We imaged the constriction patterns of the hearts in quiescent intact animals. In one heart, systole progresses rear-to-front (peristaltic coordination mode), whereas systole occurs nearly simultaneously in the other heart (synchronous coordination mode) with regular switches between these two coordination modes. Intersegmental phase relations between heart segments do not vary with changes in the heartbeat period. The peristaltic heart drives blood forward through itself and then rearward through the other longitudinal vessels. The synchronous heart does not seem to contribute to rearward flow along the body axis and may support segmental circulation instead. Simultaneous monitoring of heart motor neuron discharge and the constriction of the corresponding heart segment in innervated, reduced preparations enabled us later to meld the constriction pattern with the fictive motor pattern described in the following paper. Current injections into one heart modulatory neuron while monitoring intravascular pressure from the corresponding heart showed that these neurons can acutely change diastolic and systolic pressure. However, they do not determine the different systolic pressure profiles associated with the two coordination modes, which appear to result from the constriction pattern.

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PubMed2002

Bursting in leech heart interneurons: cell-autonomous and network-based mechanisms.

Rhythmic activity within the heartbeat pattern generator of the medicinal leech is based on the alternating bursting of mutually inhibitory pairs of oscillator heart interneurons (half-center oscillators). Bicuculline methiodide has been shown to block mutual inhibition between these interneurons and to cause them to spike tonically while recorded intracellularly (Schmidt and Calabrese, 1992). Using extracellular recording techniques, we show here that oscillator and premotor heart interneurons continue to burst when pharmacologically isolated with bicuculline, although the bursting is not robust in some preparations. We propose that a nonspecific leak current introduced by the intracellular microelectrode suppresses endogenous bursting activity to account for the discrepancy with results using intracellular recording. A two-parameter bifurcation diagram (E(leak) vs g(leak)) of a mathematical model of a single heart interneuron shows a narrow stripe of parameter values where bursting occurs, separating large zones of tonic spiking and silence. A similar analysis performed for a half-center oscillator model outlined a much larger area of bursting. Bursting in the half-center oscillator model is also less sensitive to variation in the maximal conductances of voltage-gated currents than in the single-neuron model. Thus, in addition to ensuring appropriate bursting characteristics such as period, phase, and duty cycles, the half-center configuration enhances oscillation robustness, making them less susceptible to random or imposed changes in membrane parameters. Endogenous bursting, in turn, ensures appropriate bursting if the strength of mutual inhibition is weakened and limits the minimum period of the half-center oscillator to a period near that of the single neuron.

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