Related papers: Criticality or Supersymmetry Breaking ?
Recent observation for scale invariant neural avalanches in the brain have been discussed in details in the scientific literature. We point out, that these results do not necessarily imply that the properties of the underlying neural…
A fundamental issue in nonlinear dynamics and statistical physics is how to distinguish chaotic from stochastic fluctuations in short experimental recordings. This dilemma underlies many complex systems models from stochastic gene…
Large networks of spiking neurons show abrupt changes in their collective dynamics resembling phase transitions studied in statistical physics. An example of this phenomenon is the transition from irregular, noise-driven dynamics to…
Learning is based on synaptic plasticity, which affects and is driven by neural activity. Because pre- and postsynaptic spiking activity is shaped by randomness, the synaptic weights follow a stochastic process, requiring a probabilistic…
Recent studies have shown that adaptive networks driven by simple local rules can organize into "critical" global steady states, providing another framework for self-organized criticality (SOC). We focus on the important convergence to…
Unlike digital computers, the brain exhibits spontaneous activity even during complete rest, despite the evolutionary pressure for energy efficiency. Inspired by the critical brain hypothesis, which proposes that the brain operates…
Collective temporal organization in complex systems is commonly attributed to synchronization, resonance, or proximity to dynamical instabilities. Here we identify a distinct mechanism by which coherent, synchronization-like behavior can…
Spatially extended dynamical systems, namely coupled map lattices, driven by additive spatio-temporal noise are shown to exhibit stochastic synchronization. In analogy with low-dymensional systems, synchronization can be achieved only if…
Chaos provides many interesting properties that can be used to achieve computational tasks. Such properties are sensitivity to initial conditions, space filling, control and synchronization. Chaotic neural models have been devised to…
The neural model introduced by Sompolinsky, Crisanti, and Sommers (SCS) nearly four decades ago has become a paradigmatic framework for studying complex dynamics in random recurrent networks. In its original formulation, with balanced…
Motivated by recent experiments in neuroscience which indicate that neuronal avalanches exhibit scale invariant behavior similar to self-organized critical systems, we study the role of noisy (non-conservative) local dynamics on the…
Chemical, physical and ecological systems passing through a saddle-node bifurcation will, momentarily, find themselves balanced at a semi-stable steady state. If perturbed by noise, such systems will escape from the zero-steady state, with…
Non-integrability in the sense of dynamical systems, also known as dynamical chaos, is a strongly nonlinear qualitative phenomenon. Its most promising theoretical descriptions are likely to emerge from non-perturbative approaches, with…
Recurrent neural networks with balanced excitation and inhibition exhibit irregular asynchronous dynamics, which is fundamental for cortical computations. Classical balance mechanisms require strong external inputs to sustain finite firing…
In [1], we have shown that the dynamics of an interconnected population of excitatory and inhibitory spiking neurons wandering around a Bogdanov-Takens (BT)bifurcation point can generate the observed scale-free avalanches at the population…
Despite the huge number of neurons composing a brain network, ongoing activity of local cell assemblies composing cortical columns is intrinsically stochastic. Fluctuations in their instantaneous rate of spike firing $\nu(t)$ scale with the…
This Thesis explores how tools from Statistical Physics and Information Theory can help us describe and understand complex systems. In the first part, we study the interplay between internal interactions, environmental changes, and…
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…
Critical brain hypothesis has been intensively studied both in experimental and theoretical neuroscience over the past two decades. However, some important questions still remain: (i) What is the critical point the brain operates at? (ii)…
Avalanches of electrochemical activity in brain networks have been empirically reported to obey scale-invariant behavior --characterized by power-law distributions up to some upper cut-off-- both in vitro and in vivo. Elucidating whether…