Inhibitory Dynamics in a Two-Population Kuramoto Model-Dario Lucente-Università “Luigi Vanvitelli”​

Inhibitory Dynamics in a Two-Population Kuramoto Model Captures Scale-Free Avalanches and Synchronization in Neuronal Cultures​ Dario Lucente, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” ABSTRACT Neuronal cultures exhibit complex activity characterized by bursts and avalanches, displaying a bistable coexistence of scale invariance and synchronization that remains robust across different percentages of inhibitory neurons. After introducing the basic concepts needed to frame this phenomenology, we will discuss experimental data from human-derived neuronal cultures with controlled excitation/inhibition ratios, providing a systematic characterization of avalanche statistics and their temporal organization. To describe this phenomenology, we propose a novel Kuramoto model for two interacting populations, introducing an inhibitory feedback term that captures the effective coupling between excitatory and inhibitory neurons while preserving the key features of single-population dynamics. The model reproduces the experimental findings, including the coexistence of scale-free avalanches and synchronization, their statistical properties and temporal correlations, and the emergence of an amplification-attenuation regime. ​ #YSSIFS ​ ​