Firing patterns in a random network cellular automata model of the brain

One of the main challenges in the simulation of even reduced areas of the brain is the presence of a large number of neurons and a large number of connections among them. Even from a theoretical point of view, the behaviour of dynamical models of complex networks with high connectivity is unknown, precisely because the cost of computation is still unaffordable and it will likely be in the near future. In this paper we discuss the simulation of a cellular automata network model of the brain including up to one million sites with a maximum average of three hundred connections per neuron. This level of connectivity was achieved thanks to a distributed computing environment based on the BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) platform. Moreover, in this work we consider the interplay among excitatory neurons (which induce the excitation of their neighbours) and inhibitory neurons (which prevent resting neurons from firing and induce firing neurons to pass to the refractory state). Our objective is to classify the normal (noisy but asymptotically constant patterns) and the abnormal (high oscillations with spindle-like behaviour) patterns of activity in the model brain and their stability and parameter ranges in order to determine the role of excitatory and inhibitory compensatory effects in healthy and diseased individuals.