Stochastic multiresonance in coupled excitable FHN neurons

In this paper, effects of noise on Watts-Strogatz small-world neuronal networks, which are stimulated by a subthreshold signal, have been investigated. With the numerical simulations, it is surprisingly found that there exist several optimal noise intensities at which the subthreshold signal can be detected efficiently. This indicates the occurrence of stochastic multiresonance in the studied neuronal networks. Moreover, it is revealed that the occurrence of stochastic multiresonance has close relationship with the period of subthreshold signal T_e and the noise-induced mean period of the neuronal networks T₀. In detail, we find that noise could induce the neuronal networks to generate stochastic resonance for M times if T_e is not very large and falls into the interval (M×T₀,(M+1)×T₀) with M being a positive integer. In real neuronal system, subthreshold signal detection is very meaningful. Thus, the obtained results in this paper could give some important implications on detecting subthreshold signal and propagating neuronal information in neuronal systems.