Bifurcations due to small time-lag in coupled excitable systems

A system of ODE's is used to attempt an approximation of the dynamics of two delayed coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo excitable units, described by delay-differential equations. It is shown that the codimension 2 generalized Hopf bifurcation acts as the organizing center for the dynamics of ODE's for small time-lags. Furthermore, this is used to explain important qualitative properties, like the phenomenon of oscillator death, of the exact dynamics for small time-delays.