  This paper characterizes the attractor structure of synchronous and
asynchronous Boolean networks induced by bi-threshold functions. Bi-threshold
functions are generalizations of classical threshold functions and have
separate threshold values for the transitions 0 -> 1 (up-threshold) and 1 -> 0
(down-threshold). We show that synchronous bi-threshold systems may, just like
standard threshold systems, only have fixed points and 2-cycles as attractors.
Asynchronous bi-threshold systems (fixed permutation update sequence), on the
other hand, undergo a bifurcation: when the difference \Delta of the down- and
up-threshold is less than 2 they only have fixed points as limit sets. However,
for \Delta >= 2 they may have long periodic orbits. The limiting case of \Delta
= 2 is identified using a potential function argument. Finally, we present a
series of results on the dynamics of bi-threshold systems for families of graph
classes.

Dynamical Systems