Session 1A: Inauguration and Presidential Address

The many flavours of synchrony

Although   the phenomenon of synchronization has been described and studied since the 1660’s, its full generality has only been realized in the past few decades following developments in the study of nonlinear dynamical systems. In particular, a variety of forms of synchrony are recognised, and in this talk these different flavours will be discussed. In addition to complete or identical synchrony, there can be phase synchronisation, lag synchrony, projective synchrony, and so on, all of which can be subsumed in the notion of a generalized synchrony. This is probably the most widespread form of temporal correlations that occur in nature and it offers a unified framework within which such collective behaviour can be described. Examples from biological and other natural systems will be discussed to illustrate these ideas.