Abstract
A general method for the creation of strange nonchaotic attractor is proposed. As an example, the strange nonchaotic attractor in a high-dimensional globally coupled neural system is studied numerically. For such an attractor, the time interval of continuously positive finite-time Lyapunov exponent must be smaller than the period of the driving stimulus, although it has a long-time positive tail. The intermittency between laminar and burst behavior is a characteristic dynamic of the strange nonchaotic attractors. Simulation results show that the chaotic phase occurs only within a small region around the origin in the parameter space. More than half of the large nonchaotic region is the strange nonchaotic phase. The chaotic phase is typically surrounded by strange nonchaotic attractors. This result also suggests that some biological signals that have a strange structure may be nonchaotic rather than chaotic.