Multiple cusp bifurcations.

The cusp bifurcation provides one of the simplest routes leading to bistability and hysteresis in neuron dynamics. We show that weakly connected networks of neurons near cusp bifurcations that satisfy a certain adaptation condition have quite interesting and complicated dynamics. First, we prove that any such network can be transformed into a canonical model by an appropriate continuous change of variables. Then we show that the canonical model can operate as a multiple attractor neural network or as a globally asymptotically stable neural network depending on the choice of parameters.