A possible mechanism for intermittent oscillations in the KIII model of dynamic memories - the case study of olfaction

Stability issues in Freeman's KIII model of the olfactory system are addressed. A possible mechanism for switching between various parts of the KIII attractor in response to external stimuli is outlined. It is shown that, in harmony with Haken's slaving principle, any particular system state (memory slot) can be described as a mixture of trajectories corresponding to a number of different attractors. Phase diagrams of the crucial KII sub-sets are constructed to illustrate the inherent multivaluedness (fuzziness) of the attractor landscape. In digital simulations, the overlap of the attractors can be conveniently embodied in a noisy representation, due to the fragmentation of the attractor basins and attractor crowding. Examples are introduced to illustrate the use of the observed phenomena to achieve the desired switching properties of the model.