The Effects of Cell Duplication and Noise in a Pattern Generating Network

Stability against stochastic variation is an important property for biological systems. This paper investigates the robustness of the rhythmic activity produced by a model of the segmental rhythm generator for locomotion in the lamprey, by introducing stochastic properties into the network. In addition, since neuronal models for vertebrate systems often use a single neuron to represent a large class of cells, this paper explores one of the consequences of such reduction, by investigating the effects of duplicating all the cells of the network on its stability against stochastic variation. We have found the basic model network to be very stable, and have found that this stability is increased by doubling the number of cells in the network.