Anticipating spike synchronization in nonidentical chaotic neurons

Anticipating synchronization is investigated in nonidentical chaotic systems unidirectionally coupled in a master-slave configuration without a time-delay feedback. We show that if the parameters of chaotic master and slave systems are mismatched in such a way that the mean frequency of a free slave system is greater than the mean frequency of a master system, then the phase synchronization regime can be achieved with the advanced phase of the slave system. In chaotic neural systems, this leads to the anticipating spike synchronization: unidirectionally coupled neurons synchronize in such a way that the slave neuron anticipates the chaotic spikes of the master neuron. We demonstrate our findings with coupled Rössler systems as well as with two different models of coupled neurons, namely, the Hindmarsh–Rose neurons and the adaptive exponential integrate-and-fire neurons.