Influence of external input on Oscillatory Cellular Nonlinear Networks dynamics

Locally Connected Oscillatory Networks (LCONs) are a special class of Cellular Neural Networks (CNNs) where each cell (neuron) exhibits time periodic behavior. In this paper we investigate the dynamics of LCONs whose neurons exhibit the coexistence of a stable equilibrium point and a stable limit cycle. We consider a constant external stimulus applied to each neuron, which influences the neuron´s own natural frequency. We show that new interesting dynamics, namely synchronous oscillations of various amplitudes, may arise due to the interaction between different kind of attractors. We also show that neurons subjected to different external stimuli are able to synchronize if their local couplings are strong enough.