Programs in Neuroscience and Molecular Biophysics

2Synchronization occurs often in biological sys-tems. For example, neurons of the region of the hy-pothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus ex-hibit circadian oscillations in electrical activity. These rhythms are synchronized, so that the peak of ac-tivity occurs simultaneously in all or most of the neurons. 3Figure 1: From Repper and Weaver, Nature, 418:935, 2002 4As another physiological example, the β-cells within a pancreatic islet all burst in synchrony, resulting in coordinated insulin release from all the β-cells in an islet. 5 Figure 2: From Valdeolmillos et al., J. Physiol., 493:9, 1996 6In some cases, the oscillators are in antiphase with one another. That is, their phases differ by 180o. One example of this is when two model neurons are electrically coupled and the coupling strength is weak. This electrical coupling occurs through gap junctions