No Arabic abstract
We systematically study and compare damage spreading for random Boolean and threshold networks under small external perturbations (damage), a problem which is relevant to many biological networks. We identify a new characteristic connectivity $K_s$, at which the average number of damaged nodes after a large number of dynamical updates is independent of the total number of nodes $N$. We estimate the critical connectivity for finite $N$ and show that it systematically deviates from the annealed approximation. Extending the approach followed in a previous study, we present new results indicating that internal dynamical correlations tend to increase not only the probability for small, but also for very large damage events, leading to a broad, fat-tailed distribution of damage sizes. These findings indicate that the descriptive and predictive value of averaged order parameters for finite size networks - even for biologically highly relevant sizes up to several thousand nodes - is limited.
We characterize the distributions of size and duration of avalanches propagating in complex networks. By an avalanche we mean the sequence of events initiated by the externally stimulated `excitation of a network node, which may, with some probability, then stimulate subsequent firings of the nodes to which it is connected, resulting in a cascade of firings. This type of process is relevant to a wide variety of situations, including neuroscience, cascading failures on electrical power grids, and epidemology. We find that the statistics of avalanches can be characterized in terms of the largest eigenvalue and corresponding eigenvector of an appropriate adjacency matrix which encodes the structure of the network. By using mean-field analyses, previous studies of avalanches in networks have not considered the effect of network structure on the distribution of size and duration of avalanches. Our results apply to individual networks (rather than network ensembles) and provide expressions for the distributions of size and duration of avalanches starting at particular nodes in the network. These findings might find application in the analysis of branching processes in networks, such as cascading power grid failures and critical brain dynamics. In particular, our results show that some experimental signatures of critical brain dynamics (i.e., power-law distributions of size and duration of neuronal avalanches), are robust to complex underlying network topologies.
Anticipation is a strategy used by neural fields to compensate for transmission and processing delays during the tracking of dynamical information, and can be achieved by slow, localized, inhibitory feedback mechanisms such as short-term synaptic depression, spike-frequency adaptation, or inhibitory feedback from other layers. Based on the translational symmetry of the mobile network states, we derive generic fluctuation-response relations, providing unified predictions that link their tracking behaviors in the presence of external stimuli to the intrinsic dynamics of the neural fields in their absence.
The response of degree-correlated scale-free attractor networks to stimuli is studied. We show that degree-correlated scale-free networks are robust to random stimuli as well as the uncorrelated scale-free networks, while assortative (disassortative) scale-free networks are more (less) sensitive to directed stimuli than uncorrelated networks. We find that the degree-correlation of scale-free networks makes the dynamics of attractor systems different from uncorrelated ones. The dynamics of correlated scale-free attractor networks result in the effects of degree correlation on the response to stimuli.
Determining the effect of structural perturbations on the eigenvalue spectra of networks is an important problem because the spectra characterize not only their topological structures, but also their dynamical behavior, such as synchronization and cascading processes on networks. Here we develop a theory for estimating the change of the largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix or the extreme eigenvalues of the graph Laplacian when small but arbitrary set of links are added or removed from the network. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approximation schemes using both real and artificial networks, showing in particular that we can accurately obtain the spectral ranking of small subgraphs. We also propose a local iterative scheme which computes the relative ranking of a subgraph using only the connectivity information of its neighbors within a few links. Our results may not only contribute to our theoretical understanding of dynamical processes on networks, but also lead to practical applications in ranking subgraphs of real complex networks.
Two new classes of networks are introduced that resemble small-world properties. These networks are recursively constructed but retain a fixed, regular degree. They consist of a one-dimensional lattice backbone overlayed by a hierarchical sequence of long-distance links. Both types of networks, one 3-regular and the other 4-regular, lead to distinct behaviors, as revealed by renormalization group studies. The 3-regular networks are planar, have a diameter growing as sqrt{N} with the system size N, and lead to super-diffusion with an exact, anomalous exponent d_w=1.3057581..., but possesses only a trivial fixed point T_c=0 for the Ising ferromagnet. In turn, the 4-regular networks are non-planar, have a diameter growing as ~2^[sqrt(log_2 N^2)], exhibit ballistic diffusion (d_w=1), and a non-trivial ferromagnetic transition, T_c>0. It suggest that the 3-regular networks are still quite geometric, while the 4-regular networks qualify as true small-world networks with mean-field properties. As an example of an application we discuss synchronization of processors on these networks.