Coupled Direct and Indirect Positive Feedback Loop Motifs Induce Robust Synchronized Bursting Behaviors

The understanding of the physiological basis of basic functions of brains requires detailed information about the functional structures of neuronal networks. Feedback loops are crucial dynamic motifs playing a pivotal role in the regulation and control of many important physiological and biochemical processes such as gene transcription, signal transduction, and metabolism (intracellular processes), and neuronal coding and decoding (intercellular processes). Based on simulations for synthetic spiking neuronal network models, it is shown that coupled direct and indirect PFL motifs be an underlying mechanism for robust synchronized bursting behaviors, which are one of the most remarkable characteristics of biological neuronal networks. This result may infer a crucial structural module for designing both in vitro and in vivo neuronal net-works.