Chimera-like state in the bistable excitatory-inhibitory cortical neuronal network

In recent years, the coexistence of different states in the neural system has attracted widespread interest. Researchers have found a coexisting state of spiking and resting in homogeneous networks, which is known as the chimera-like state. The real cortical network is a much more complex and heterogeneous network. Therefore, the excitatory-inhibitory cortical neuronal network is constructed based on Hodgkin-Huxley neuronal model in this paper, and the chimera-like state is further investigated in the heterogeneous network. It is found that the chimera-like state is related to the balance between excitatory and inhibitory synaptic currents. The excitatory coupling current can counteract the initial condition effect and promote synchronized firing of neurons in the network. The inhibitory coupling current desynchronizes the network and thus induces synaptic noise, resulting in an inverse bell-shaped dependence of the change in the number of spiking neurons. We analyzed the underlying mechanisms of synaptic noise in the phase plane diagram and found it has asymmetry for the neuronal state transition. In addition, neurons with low degrees have a higher probability of undergoing state transitions. Finally, we verified that the chimera-like state is robust to network topology and initial conditions. The results provide a new insight into neuronal interactions in heterogeneous networks and might help to reveal the mechanisms of coexistence of different states in the cortical network.