Entrainment range of nonidentical circadian oscillators by a light-dark cycle

The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is a principal circadian clock in mammals, which controls physiological and behavioral daily rhythms. The SCN has two main features: Maintaining a rhythmic cycle of approximately 24 h in the absence of a light-dark cycle (free-running period) and the ability to entrain to external light-dark cycles. Both free-running period and range of entrainment vary from one species to another. To understand this phenomenon, we investigated the diversity of a free-running period by the distribution of coupling strengths in our previous work [Phys. Rev. E 80, 030904(R) (2009)]. In this paper we numerically found that the dispersion of intrinsic periods among SCN neurons influence the entrainment range of the SCN, but has little influence on the free-running periods under constant darkness. This indicates that the dispersion of coupling strengths determines the diversity in free-running periods, while the dispersion of intrinsic periods determines the diversity in the entrainment range. A theoretical analysis based on two coupled neurons is presented to explain the results of numerical simulations.