Noise-enhanced phase synchronization in excitable media

We study the response of one- and two-dimensional excitable media to external spatiotemporal noise in terms of synchronization. The media are modeled by a finite-size lattice of locally coupled non-identical units of the FitzHugh-Nagumo type driven by additive noise. We show that at nonzero noise level the behavior of the system becomes extremely ordered which is manifested by entrainment of the mean frequencies and by stochastic phase locking of distant oscillators in the lattice.