Enhanced Synchronization of Intercellular Calcium Oscillations by Noise Contaminated Signals

We consider the dynamics of locally coupled calcium oscillation systems, each cell is subjected to extracellular contaminated signal, which contains common sub-threshold signal and independent Gaussian noise. It is found that intermediate noise can enhance synchronized oscillations of calcium ions, where the frequency of noise-induced oscillations is matched with the one of sub-threshold external signal. We show that synchronization is enhanced as a result of the entrainment of external signal. Furthermore, the effect of coupling strength is considered. We find above-mentioned phenomenon exists only when coupling strength is very small. Our findings may exhibit that noise can enhance the detection of feeble external signal through the mechanism of synchronization of intercellular calcium ions.