TY - JOUR A1 - Baptista, Murilo da Silva A1 - Pereira, Tiago A1 - Sartorelli, J. C. A1 - Caldas, Ibere Luiz A1 - Kurths, Jürgen T1 - Non-transitive maps in phase synchronization N2 - Concepts from Ergodic Theory are used to describe the existence of special non-transitive maps in attractors of phase synchronous chaotic oscillators. In particular, it is shown that, for a class of phase-coherent oscillators, these special maps imply phase synchronization. We illustrate these ideas in the sinusoidally forced Chua's circuit and two coupled Rossler oscillators. Furthermore, these results are extended to other coupled chaotic systems. In addition, a phase for a chaotic attractor is defined from the tangent vector of the flow. Finally, it is discussed how these maps can be used for the real-time detection of phase synchronization in experimental systems. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved Y1 - 2005 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kitajima, H. A1 - Kurths, Jürgen T1 - Synchronized firing of FitzHugh-Nagumo neurons by noise N2 - We investigate the influence of noise on synchronization between the spiking activities of neurons with external impulsive forces. We first analyze the dependence of the synchronized firing on the amplitude and the angular frequency of the impulsive force in the noise-free system. Three cases (regular spiking, traveling wave, and chaotic spiking) with low synchronized firing are chosen to study effects due to noise. In each case we find that small noise can be a promoter of synchronization phenomena in neural activities, by choosing an appropriate noise intensity acting on some of the neurons. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics Y1 - 2005 SN - 1054-1500 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Beim Graben, Peter A1 - Frisch, Stefan A1 - Fink, A. A1 - Saddy, Douglas A1 - Kurths, Jürgen T1 - Topographic voltage and coherence mapping of brain potentials by means of the symbolic resonance analysis N2 - We apply the recently developed symbolic resonance analysis to electroencephalographic measurements of event- related brain potentials (ERPs) in a language processing experiment by using a three-symbol static encoding with varying thresholds for analyzing the ERP epochs, followed by a spin-flip transformation as a nonlinear filter. We compute an estimator of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the symbolic dynamics measuring the coherence of threshold-crossing events. Hence, we utilize the inherent noise of the EEG for sweeping the underlying ERP components beyond the encoding thresholds. Plotting the SNR computed within the time window of a particular ERP component (the N400) against the encoding thresholds, we find different resonance curves for the experimental conditions. The maximal differences of the SNR lead to the estimation of optimal encoding thresholds. We show that topographic brain maps of the optimal threshold voltages and of their associated coherence differences are able to dissociate the underlying physiological processes, while corresponding maps gained from the customary voltage averaging technique are unable to do so Y1 - 2005 SN - 1539-3755 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meinecke, Frank C. A1 - Ziehe, Andreas A1 - Kurths, Jürgen A1 - Müller, Klaus-Robert T1 - Measuring phase synchronization of superimposed signals N2 - Phase synchronization is an important phenomenon that occurs in a wide variety of complex oscillatory processes. Measuring phase synchronization can therefore help to gain fundamental insight into nature. In this Letter we point out that synchronization analysis techniques can detect spurious synchronization, if they are fed with a superposition of signals such as in electroencephalography or magnetoencephalography data. We show how techniques from blind source separation can help to nevertheless measure the true synchronization and avoid such pitfalls Y1 - 2005 SN - 0031-9007 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Surovyatkina, E. D. A1 - Kravtsov, Y. A. A1 - Kurths, Jürgen T1 - Fluctuation growth and saturation in nonlinear oscillators on the threshold of bifurcation of spontaneous symmetry breaking N2 - We study prebifurcation fluctuation amplification in nonlinear oscillators subject to bifurcations of spontaneous symmetry breaking which are manifest in the doubling of stable equilibrium states. Our theoretical estimates of both the linear growth and the nonlinear saturation of the fluctuations are in good agreement with our results from numerical simulations. We show that in the saturation mode, the fluctuation variance is proportional to the standard deviation of the external noise, whereas in the linear mode, the fluctuation variance is proportional to the noise variance. It is demonstrated that the phenomenon of prebifurcation noise amplification is more pronounced in the case of a slow transition through the bifurcation point. The amplification of fluctuations in this case makes it easier to form a symmetric probability of the final equilibrium states. In contrast, for a fast transition through the bifurcation point, the effect of amplification is much less pronounced. Under backward and forward passages through the bifurcation point, a loop of noise-dependent hysteresis emerges here. We find that for a fast transition of the nonlinear oscillator through the bifurcation point, the probability symmetry of the final equilibrium states is destroyed Y1 - 2005 SN - 1539-3755 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Shabunin, A. A1 - Astakhov, Vladimir V. A1 - Kurths, Jürgen T1 - Quantitative analysis of chaotic synchronization by means of coherence N2 - We use an index of chaotic synchronization based on the averaged coherence function for the quantitative analysis of the process of the complete synchronization loss in unidirectionally coupled oscillators and maps. We demonstrate that this value manifests different stages of the synchronization breaking. It is invariant to time delay and insensitive to small noise and distortions, which can influence the accessible signals at measurements. Peculiarities of the synchronization destruction in maps and oscillators are investigated Y1 - 2005 SN - 1539-3755 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Saparin, P. I. A1 - Thomsen, J. S. A1 - Prohaska, Steffen A1 - Zaikin, Alexei A1 - Kurths, Jürgen A1 - Hege, H. C. A1 - Gowin, W. T1 - Quantification of spatial structure of human proximal tibial bone biopsies using 3D measures of complexity N2 - Changes in trabecular bone composition during development of osteoporosis are used as a model for bone loss in microgravity conditions during a space flight. Symbolic dynamics and measures of complexity are proposed and applied to assess quantitatively the structural composition of bone tissue from 3D data sets of human tibia bone biopsies acquired by a micro-CT scanner. In order to justify the newly proposed approach, the measures of complexity of the bone architecture were compared with the results of traditional 2D bone histomorphometry. The proposed technique is able to quantify the structural loss of the bone tissue and may help to diagnose and to monitor changes in bone structure of patients on Earth as well as of the space-flying personnel. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved Y1 - 2005 SN - 0094-5765 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Baptista, Murilo da Silva A1 - Kurths, Jürgen T1 - Chaotic channel N2 - This work combines the theory of chaotic synchronization with the theory of information in order to introduce the chaotic channel, an active medium formed by connected chaotic systems. This subset of a large chaotic net represents the path along which information flows. We show that the possible amount of information exchange between the transmitter, where information enters the net, and the receiver, the destination of the information, is proportional to the level of synchronization between these two special subsystems Y1 - 2005 SN - 1539-3755 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Feudel, Fred A1 - Witt, Annette A1 - Gellert, Marcus A1 - Kurths, Jürgen A1 - Grebogi, Celso A1 - Sanjuan, Miguel Angel Fernandez T1 - Intersections of stable and unstable manifolds : the skeleton of Lagrangian chaos N2 - We study Hamiltonian chaos generated by the dynamics of passive tracers moving in a two-dimensional fluid flow and describe the complex structure formed in a chaotic layer that separates a vortex region from the shear flow. The stable and unstable manifolds of unstable periodic orbits are computed. It is shown that their intersections in the Poincare map as an invariant set of homoclinic points constitute the backbone of the chaotic layer. Special attention is paid to the finite time properties of the chaotic layer. In particular, finite time Lyapunov exponents are computed and a scaling law of the variance of their distribution is derived. Additionally, the box counting dimension as an effective dimension to characterize the fractal properties of the layer is estimated for different duration times of simulation. Its behavior in the asymptotic time limit is discussed. By computing the Lyapunov exponents and by applying methods of symbolic dynamics, the formation of the layer as a function of the external forcing strength, which in turn represents the perturbation of the originally integrable system, is characterized. In particular, it is shown that the capture of KAM tori by the layer has a remarkable influence on the averaged Lyapunov exponents. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved Y1 - 2005 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Motter, Adilson E. A1 - Zhou, Changsong A1 - Kurths, Jürgen T1 - Enhancing complex-network synchronization N2 - Heterogeneity in the degree (connectivity) distribution has been shown to suppress synchronization in networks of symmetrically coupled oscillators with uniform coupling strength (unweighted coupling). Here we uncover a condition for enhanced synchronization in weighted networks with asymmetric coupling. We show that, in the optimum regime, synchronizability is solely determined by the average degree and does not depend on the system size and the details of the degree distribution. In scale-free networks, where the average degree may increase with heterogeneity, synchronizability is drastically enhanced and may become positively correlated with heterogeneity, while the overall cost involved in the network coupling is significantly reduced as compared to the case of unwcighted coupling Y1 - 2005 SN - 0295-5075 ER -