Related papers: Is there sufficient evidence for criticality in co…
Criticality, observed during second-order phase transitions, is an emergent phenomenon. The brain operates near criticality, where complex systems exhibit high correlations. The critical brain hypothesis suggests that the brain becomes an…
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…
Stationarity of the constituents of the body and of its functionalities is a basic requirement for life, being equivalent to survival in first place. Assuming that the resting state activity of the brain serves essential functionalities,…
Experiments in various neural systems found avalanches: bursts of activity with characteristics typical for critical dynamics. A possible explanation for their occurrence is an underlying network that self-organizes into a critical state.…
Critical dynamics are assumed to be an attractive mode for normal brain functioning as information processing and computational capabilities are found to be optimized there. Recent experimental observations of neuronal activity patterns…
Scale-free behavior as well as oscillations are frequently observed in the activity of many natural systems. One important example is the cortical tissues of mammalian brain where both phenomena are simultaneously observed. Rhythmic…
Experiments suggest that cerebral cortex gains several functional advantages by operating in a dynamical regime near the critical point of a phase transition. However, a long-standing criticism of this hypothesis is that critical dynamics…
The human brain exhibits a complex structure made of scale-free highly connected modules loosely interconnected by weaker links to form a small-world network. These features appear in healthy patients whereas neurological diseases often…
Highly correlated brain dynamics produces synchronized states with no behavioral value, while weakly correlated dynamics prevent information flow. In between these states, the unique dynamical features of the critical state endow the brain…
How subjective experience (i.e., consciousness) arises out of objective material processes has been called the hard problem. The neuroscience of consciousness has set out to find the sufficient conditions for consciousness and theoretical…
Many complex systems display self-organized critical states characterized by 1/f frequency scaling of power spectra. Global variables such as the electroencephalogram, scale as 1/f, which could be the sign of self-organized critical states…
Novel computing hardwares are necessary to keep up with today's increasing demand for data storage and processing power. In this research project, we turn to the brain for inspiration to develop novel computing substrates that are…
In this paper we study a simple model of a purely excitatory neural network that, by construction, operates at a critical point. This model allows us to consider various markers of criticality and illustrate how they should perform in a…
The cerebral cortex spontaneously displays different patterns of activity that evolve over time according to the brain state. Sleep, wakefulness, resting states, and attention are examples of a wide spectrum of physiological states that can…
The brain keeps its overall dynamics in a corridor of intermediate activity and it has been a long standing question what possible mechanism could achieve this task. Mechanisms from the field of statistical physics have long been suggesting…
Conscious awareness refers to the association of information processing in the brain that is accompanied by subjective, reportable experiences. Current models of conscious access propose that sufficiently strong sensory stimuli ignite a…
There is evidence that biological systems, such as the brain, work at a critical regime robust to noise, and are therefore able to remain in it under perturbations. In this work, we address the question of robustness of critical systems to…
Neural systems face the challenge of maintaining reliable representations amid variations from plasticity and spontaneous activity. In particular, the spontaneous dynamics in neuronal circuit is known to operate near a highly variable…
The brain criticality hypothesis has largely only characterized brain dynamics in terms of their self-similarity, although experimental evidence suggests that the brain exhibits significant multifractality. To understand how multifractality…
Recent studies on the complex systems have shown that the synchronization of oscillators including neuronal ones is faster, stronger, and more efficient in the small-world networks than in the regular or the random networks, and many…