  We compare the slow dynamics of irreversible gels, colloidal gels, glasses
and spin glasses by analyzing the behavior of the so called non-linear
dynamical susceptibility, a quantity usually introduced to quantitatively
characterize the dynamical heterogeneities. In glasses this quantity typically
grows with the time, reaches a maximum and then decreases at large time, due to
the transient nature of dynamical heterogeneities and to the absence of a
diverging static correlation length. We have recently shown that in
irreversible gels the dynamical susceptibility is instead an increasing
function of the time, as in the case of spin glasses, and tends asymptotically
to the mean cluster size. On the basis of molecular dynamics simulations, we
here show that in colloidal gelation where clusters are not permanent, at very
low temperature and volume fractions, i.e. when the lifetime of the bonds is
much larger than the structural relaxation time, the non-linear susceptibility
has a behavior similar to the one of the irreversible gel, followed, at higher
volume fractions, by a crossover towards the behavior of glass forming liquids.
