Spontaneous onset of irregular collective oscillations in heterogeneous neural networks

More and more interest is devoted to identify the basic mechanisms underlying the emergence of nontrivial collective behaviors of large populations of neurons, one typical instance being the irregular background activity in the cerebral cortex [1]. Though accurate mathematical models have been developed for describing the microscopic activity of single neurons and of their synapsis [2], it is convenient to use relatively simple systems [3], under the assumption that they could be able to reproduce the relevant collective phenomena exhibited by realistic systems.