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Krasnow Institute > Monday Seminars > Abstracts
Synchrony in Nature: Ernest Barreto and Paul So One of nature's most amazing sights is the rhythmic, synchronized flashing of thousands upon thousands of fireflies on riverbanks in Southeast Asia. This is a particularly dramatic example of a general phenomenon that has been garnering more and more attention from scientists: The ability of individual rhythmic elements of all sorts-fireflies, clocks, pacemaker cells ofthe heart, neurons of the brain-to synchronize with one another. We will review the development of our current understanding of synchronization, which dates back to Huygens, and emphasize the pioneering work of Winfree, Kuramoto, Strogatz, and others. This leads to the larger question of how more general collective behavior emerges from large collections of interacting elements. Finally, we will review our own work in the biological context of interacting neurons.
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