Amplification of information transfer in excitable systems that reside in a steady state near a bifurcation point to complex oscillatory behavior.

We study the amplification of information transfer in excitable systems. We show that excitable systems residing in a steady state near a bifurcation point to complex oscillatory behavior incorporate several frequencies that can be exploited for a resonant amplification of information transfer. In particular, for excitable neurons that reside in a steady state near a bifurcation point to elliptic bursting oscillations, we show that in addition to the resonant frequency of damped oscillations around the stable focus, another frequency exists that resonantly enhances large amplitude bursts and thus amplifies the information transfer in the system. This additional frequency cannot be found by the local stability analysis and has never been used for amplifying the information transfer in a system. The results obtained for elliptic bursting oscillations can be generalized also to other complex oscillators, such as parabolic or square-wave bursters. Additionally, the biological importance of presented results in the field of neuroscience is outlined.