Related papers: Brain modularity controls the critical behavior of…
Graph theory is now becoming a standard tool in system-level neuroscience. However, endowing observed brain anatomy and dynamics with a complex network structure does not entail that the brain actually works as a network. Asking whether the…
[Background] Several studies have mentioned network modularity -- that a network can easily be decomposed into subgraphs that are densely connected within and weakly connected between each other -- as a factor affecting metabolic…
There are indications that for optimizing neural computation, neural networks - including the brain - operate at criticality. Previous approaches have, however, used diverse fingerprints of criticality, leaving open the question whether…
The critical brain hypothesis has emerged as an attractive framework to understand neuronal activity, but it is still widely debated. In this work, we analyze data from a multi-electrodes array in the rat's cortex and we find that power-law…
Neuromorphic engineering is a rapidly developing field that aims to take inspiration from the biological organization of neural systems to develop novel technology for computing, sensing, and actuating. The unique properties of such systems…
Hierarchically modular organization is a canonical network topology that is evolutionarily conserved in the nervous systems of animals. Within the network, neurons form directional connections defined by the growth of their axonal…
Dynamical criticality has been shown to enhance information processing in dynamical systems, and there is evidence for self-organized criticality in neural networks. A plausible mechanism for such self-organization is activity dependent…
A model of the columnar functional organization of neocortical association areas is studied. The neuronal network is composed of many Hebbian autoassociators, or modules, each of which interacts with a relatively small number of the others.…
Self-sustained activity in the brain is observed in the absence of external stimuli and contributes to signal propagation, neural coding, and dynamic stability. It also plays an important role in cognitive processes. In this work, by means…
This thesis is a compendium of research which brings together ideas from the fields of Complex Networks and Computational Neuroscience to address two questions regarding neural systems: 1) How the activity of neurons, via synaptic changes,…
Modular neural networks outperform nonmodular neural networks on tasks ranging from visual question answering to robotics. These performance improvements are thought to be due to modular networks' superior ability to model the compositional…
A dynamical system approaching the first-order transition can exhibit a specific type of critical behavior known as self-organized bistability (SOB). It lies in the fact that the system can permanently switch between the coexisting states…
We consider the implications of the mathematical analysis of neurone-to-neurone dynamical complex networks. We show how the dynamical behaviour of small scale strongly connected networks lead naturally to non-binary information processing…
Given a population of interconnected input-output agents repeatedly exposed to independent random inputs, we talk of correlated variability when agents' outputs are variable (i.e., they change randomly at each input repetition) but…
When viewed at a certain coarse grain, the brain seems a relatively small dynamical system composed by a few dozen interacting areas, performing a number of stereotypical behaviors. It is known that, even relatively small dynamical systems…
Neuronal avalanches, measured in vitro and in vivo, exhibit a robust critical behaviour. Their temporal organization hides the presence of correlations. Here we present experimental measurements of the waiting time distribution between…
Adaptive behavior, cognition and emotion are the result of a bewildering variety of brain spatiotemporal activity patterns. An important problem in neuroscience is to understand the mechanism by which the human brain's 100 billion neurons…
We present an approach to study functional segregation and integration in the living brain based on community structure decomposition determined by maximum modularity. We demonstrate this method with a network derived from functional…
Cognitive flexibility describes the human ability to switch between modes of mental function to achieve goals. Mental switching is accompanied by transient changes in brain activity, which must occur atop an anatomical architecture that…
It has been postulated that the brain operates in a self-organized critical state that brings multiple benefits, such as optimal sensitivity to input. Thus far, self-organized criticality has typically been depicted as a one-dimensional…