Regimes and mechanisms of transient amplification in abstract and biological networks

We use upper triangular matrices as abstract representations of neuronal networks and directly manipulate their eigenspectra and non-normality to explore different regimes of transient amplification. Counter-intuitively, manipulating the imaginary distribution can lead to highly amplifying regimes. This is noteworthy, because biological networks are constrained by Dale's law and the non-existence of neuronal self-loops, limiting the range of manipulations in the real dimension. Within these constraints we can further manipulate transient amplification by controlling global inhibition.