
Matsuoka
neural oscillators nonlinearities are all linear by parts. For example, the
max(x,0) nonlinearity has a unity gain when the input is non-negative and zero
otherwise. All the nonlinearities of this oscillator may thus be decomposed
into regions of operation, and analysed with linear tools in that regions.
Since the oscillator nonlinearities are all continuous, the system is well
defined at the boundary of these regions (although the derivatives are not). In
this work, it is presented a time domain analysis for a piece-linear model of
the dynamical system, which will bring more insight to variation of
oscillator's oscillations with parameters, and to stability issues. The
time-domain description allows a better comprehension of the neural oscillator,
being possible the determination of the range of values for which the neural
oscillator converges: to a stable equilibrium point, to a stable limit cycle or
to a stable limit set. A similar time-domain analysis for the study of the
parameters was presented by Matsuoka, using a mathematical formalism, instead
of considering the neural oscillator as a piece-wise linear system, as proposed
by Matt Williamson at our lab. When converging to a limit set, some of the
internal state variables may diverge along some eigen-directions, but the
others converge to zero, implying a volume contraction in the state-space, as
was analysed using Volume Contraction Analysis.