Bursting as an emergent phenomenon in coupled chaotic maps

A two-dimensional map exhibiting chaotic bursting behavior similar to the bursting electrical activity observed in biological neurons and endocrine cells is examined. Model parameters are changed so that the bursting behavior is destroyed. We show that bursting can be recovered in a population of such nonbursting cells when they are coupled via the mean field. The phenomenon is explained with a geometric bifurcation analysis. The analysis reveals that emergent bursting in the network is due to coupling alone and is very robust to changes in the coupling strength, and that heterogeneity in the model parameters does not play a role.