Stability of Boolean networks: The joint effects of topology and update rules

Abstract

We study the stability of orbits in large Boolean networks with given complex topology. We impose no restrictions on the form of the update rules, which may be correlated with local topological properties of the network. While recent past work has addressed the separate effects of nontrivial network topology and certain special classes of update rules on stability, only crude results exist about how these effects interact. We present a widely applicable solution to this problem. Numerical experiments confirm our theory and show that local correlations between topology and update rules can have profound effects on the qualitative behavior of these systems.