Hopf bifurcation analysis in a tri-neuron network with time delay

A neural network model with three neurons and a single delay is considered. The existence of local Hopf bifurcations is first considered and then explicit formulas are derived by using the normal form method and center manifold theory to determine the direction of the Hopf bifurcations and the stability of the bifurcating periodic solutions. A global Hopf bifurcation theorem due to Wu and a Bendixson's criterion for high-dimensional ODE due to Li and Muldowney are used to obtain a group of conditions for the system to have multiple periodic solutions when the delay is sufficiently large. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out to support the theoretical analysis of the research.