Spatiotemporal dynamics of a modified FitzHugh–Nagumo neuronal network with time delays

Over the past decades, spatiotemporal dynamics has received considerable attention in many fields, such as biology, chemistry and neuroscience. This paper reveals the spiral wave dynamics in a two-dimensional modified FitzHugh–Nagumo neuronal network. The network is composed of interacting neurons with nearest-neighbor connections. Time delays are introduced into the couplings among neurons. Numerical simulations are performed and interesting and abundant spatiotemporal patterns are obtained, such as spiral waves. It is shown that the time delays can give rise to the generation, transition and modulation of the spiral waves. Moreover, external periodic excitations are applied to regulate the spiral waves and different types of waves are observed, such as target wave and traveling wave.