Dario Lucente — University of Campania "L. Vanvitelli" #
Novel Kuramoto model with inhibition dynamics modeling scale-free avalanches and synchronization in neuronal cultures #
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. In this work, we analyze 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.