Degeneracy in neuronal bifurcation landscapes: Equivalent bifurcation sequences across distinct parameter sets.

Distinct conductance configurations in a minimal neuron model generate the same bifurcation sequences across extracellular potassium concentration changes, yielding equivalent bursting, seizure-like activity, and depolarization block regimes.

• Why it matters: Degeneracy is linked to resilience, but it is unclear how it is arranged across a neuron’s dynamical bifurcation landscape and whether functionally equivalent configurations respond similarly to ionic perturbations.
• What they did: The study systematically varies three conductances while sweeping extracellular potassium concentration to map parameter-space regions with shared bifurcation pathways, then quantifies robustness using a resilience threshold for regime transitions.
• The result: Degenerate configurations form structured landscapes with different trajectories under ionic modulation, showing that functional equivalence under fixed conditions does not imply equivalent sensitivity to extracellular perturbations.

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