Abstract

Agent-based neural models often encode transmission within neuron state updates, which can make it difficult to separately log and quantify spatial recruitment patterns, delay structure, and environment-mediated feedback effects. We present LANA (Local Adaptive Neural Agents), a dual-agent neural agent-based model in which neurons and propagating signals are represented as distinct interacting entities embedded in a dynamic environmental field. The model combines discrete leaky integrate-and-fire neuron dynamics, mobile signal agents, synaptic links with distance-dependent delays, and a bounded environment-to-neuron feedback mechanism. LANA is intended as a normalized phenomenological mesoscopic framework for mechanism-level comparison rather than as a circuit-specific biophysical reconstruction. To support interpretability and reproducibility, we report a compact internal verification block for the implemented operators, including delay propagation, environmental decay and diffusion, threshold activation, and refractory enforcement. We then compare the full LANA model against a matched neuron-only baseline and summarize spatial recruitment using first-spike maps, cumulative recruitment times, and wavefront speed as a secondary descriptive metric. Finally, we evaluate two controlled operating regimes, a resting regime (S1) and a hyperexcitable regime (S2), under fixed network size, stimulation schedule, and matched random seeds. Relative to the baseline, the full model sustains and spreads activity more effectively and provides spatially resolved recruitment summaries, including first-spike timing and cumulative recruitment measures, that are not available in the same form when transmission is represented only through neuron-level updates. Relative to S1, S2 exhibits earlier activation, higher firing activity, stronger environmental accumulation, and faster cumulative recruitment. Local and factorial sensitivity analyses further identify the parameters that most strongly govern these regime differences. Together, these results position LANA as a normalized mesoscopic and computationally tractable framework for studying how excitability, transport state dynamics, delayed coupling, and environment-mediated feedback jointly shape emergent activity in controlled simulation settings.

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