Figure 6. Function‐switching mechanism and decomposability of hybrid circuits.

1. How is hybrid C capable of performing both functions upon a change in the context signal? We use the simplified 2‐cell model of Box 2 with parameters (w _A = 0.41, w _B = 5.49, w _C = −0.30, α _A = 6.93, α _D = 12.79). The context signal changes the position and number of steady states through a pitchfork bifurcation (Strogatz, 2014) (Bifurcation 2). This bifurcation drives the trajectory to access different attractors found in regions of the phase portrait corresponding to induction (θ ₂) and inhibition (θ ₄) patterns, respectively.
2. Phase portraits of the mono‐functional modules (induction and inhibition) that build hybrid C.
3. The nullclines of hybrid C can be decomposed into sub‐parts which correspond to the induction and inhibition modules.