Spiking-bursting alternating chaos mediated by a locally active memristor

Abstract Local active memristors demonstrate complex nonlinear dynamic characteristics under specific voltage stimuli, making them well-suited for emulating biological synapse behavior. This paper presents a novel local active memristor with coexisting hysteresis loops, whose non-volatility and local activity are experimentally verified. Based on this memristor, a spiking-bursting chaotic system is constructed, which can reproduce neuronal firing patterns such as periodic spiking, bursting and spiking-bursting alternating discharge. In addition, it reveals the generation mechanism of the spiking-bursting alternating chaos driven by the locally active memristor. Finally, the chaotic system is physically implemented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). The experimental results show excellent agreement with numerical simulations, confirming the system’s feasibility and highlighting its potential for engineering applications.