Metastable dynamics in heterogeneous neural fields

Abstract

We present numerical simulations of metastable states in heterogeneous neural fields that are connected along heteroclinic orbits. Such trajectories are possible representations of transient neural activity as observed, for example, in the electroencephalogram. Based on previous theoretical findings on learning algorithms for neural fields, we directly construct synaptic weight kernels from Lotka-Volterra neural population dynamics without supervised training approaches. We deliver a MATLAB neural field toolbox validated by two examples of one- and two-dimensional neural fields. We demonstrate trial-to-trial variability and distributed representations in our simulations which might therefore be regarded as a proof-of-concept for more advanced neural field models of metastable dynamics in neurophysiological data.