Existence of travelling pulses in a neural model

Abstract

In 1992 Ermentrout and McLeod published in this journal a landmark study of travelling wavefronts for a differential–integral equation model of a neural network. Since then a number of authors have extended the model by adding an additional equation for a ‘recovery variable’, thus allowing the possibility of travelling-pulse-type solutions. In a recent paper, Faye gave perhaps the first rigorous proof of the existence (and stability) of a travelling-pulse solution for a model of this type, treating a simplified version of equations originally developed by Kilpatrick and Bressloff. The excitatory weight function J used in this work allowed the system to be reduced to a set of four coupled ordinary differential equations (ODEs), and a specific firing-rate function S, with parameters, was considered. The method of geometric singular perturbation was employed, together with blow-ups. In this paper we extend Faye's results on existence by dropping one of his key hypotheses, proving the existence of pulses at least two different speeds, and, in a sense, allowing a wider range of the small parameter in the problem. The proofs are classical and self-contained aside from standard ODE material.