Unstable patterns and robust synchronization in a model of motor pathway in birdsong

This paper investigates the fundamental dynamical mechanism responsible for transition to chaos in periodically modulated Duffing–Van der Pol oscillator. It is shown that a modulationally unstable pattern appears into an initially stable motionless state. A further spatiotemporal transition occurs with a sharp interface from the selected stable pattern to a stabilized pattern or chaotic state. Also, the synchronization of the chaotic state of the model is investigated. The results are discussed in the context of generalized synchronization. The main idea is to construct an augmented dynamical system from the synchronization error system, which is itself uncertain. The advantage of this method over existing results is that the synchronization time is explicitly computed. Numerical simulations are provided to verify the operation of the proposed algorithm.