Related papers: Is cortical criticality unique?
We show that a network of spiking neurons exhibits robust self-organized criticality if the synaptic efficacies follow realistic dynamics. Deriving analytical expressions for the average coupling strengths and inter-spike intervals, we…
The idea that information-processing systems operate near criticality to enhance computational performance is supported by scaling signatures in brain activity. However, external signals raise the question of whether this behavior is…
Neural systems process information in a dynamical regime between silence and chaotic dynamics. This has lead to the criticality hypothesis which suggests that neural systems reach such a state by self-organizing towards the critical point…
This paper addresses the question of the brain's critical dynamics after an injury such as a stroke. It is hypothesized that the healthy brain operates near a phase transition (critical point), which provides optimal conditions for…
Our mysterious brain is believed to operate near a non-equilibrium point and generate critical self-organized avalanches in neuronal activity. Recent experimental evidence has revealed significant heterogeneity in both synaptic input and…
The hierarchical organization of the brain is a fundamental structural principle, while brain criticality is a leading hypothesis for its collective dynamics. However, the connection between structure and signatures of criticality remains…
The presence of both critical behavior and oscillating patterns in brain dynamics is a very interesting issue. In this paper, we consider a model for a neuron population, where each neuron is modeled by an over-damped rotator. We find that…
Multiple studies of neural avalanches across different data modalities led to the prominent hypothesis that the brain operates near a critical point. The observed exponents often indicate the mean-field directed-percolation universality…
We model spontaneous cortical activity with a network of coupled spiking units, in which multiple spatio-temporal patterns are stored as dynamical attractors. We introduce an order parameter, which measures the overlap (similarity) between…
Complex systems, when poised near a critical point of a phase transition between order and disorder, exhibit a dynamics comprising a scale-free mixture of order and disorder which is universal, i.e. system-independent (1-5). It allows…
Self-organized criticality has been proposed to be a universal mechanism for the emergence of scale-free dynamics in many complex systems, and possibly in the brain. While such scale-free patterns were identified experimentally in many…
At the point of a second order phase transition also termed as a critical point, systems display long range order and their macroscopic behaviors are independent of the microscopic details making up the system. Due to these properties, it…
Scale-invariant neuronal avalanches have been observed in cell cultures and slices as well as anesthetized and awake brains, suggesting that the brain operates near criticality, i.e. within a narrow margin between avalanche propagation and…
Thermodynamic criticality describes emergent phenomena in a wide variety of complex systems. In the mammalian brain, the complex dynamics that spontaneously emerge from neuronal interactions have been characterized as neuronal avalanches, a…
Large-scale recordings of neuronal activity make it possible to gain insights into the collective activity of neural ensembles. It has been hypothesized that neural populations might be optimized to operate at a 'thermodynamic critical…
Neurons are thought of as the building blocks of excitable brain tissue. However, at the single neuron level, the neuronal membrane, the dendritic arbor and the axonal projections can also be considered an extended active medium. Active…
Recent experiments on cortical neural networks have revealed the existence of well-defined avalanches of electrical activity. Such avalanches have been claimed to be generically scale-invariant -- i.e. power-law distributed -- with many…
In the past few decades, there have been intense debates whether the brain operates at a critical state. To verify the criticality hypothesis in the neuronal networks is challenging and the accumulating experimental and theoretical results…
It is widely accepted that the brain operates near a critical state, characterized by neural avalanches that follow power-law distributions. However, the functional rationale for why neural systems attain criticality remains unclear. Here,…
The observation of critical-like behavior in cortical networks represents a major step forward in elucidating how the brain manages information. Understanding the origin and functionality of critical-like dynamics, as well as their…