Related papers: Self-organization toward criticality by synaptic p…
In this essay we elaborate on recent evidence demonstrating the presence of a second order phase transition in human brain dynamics and discuss its consequences for theoretical approaches to brain function. We review early evidence of…
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…
A spring-block model governed by threshold dynamics and driven by temporally increasing spring constants is investigated. Due to its novel multiplicative driving, criticality occurs even with periodic boundary conditions via a mechanism…
We investigate a suggested path to self-organized criticality. Originally, this path was devised to "generate criticality" in systems displaying an absorbing-state phase transition, but closer examination of the mechanism reveals that it…
Many biological and cognitive systems do not operate deep within one or other regime of activity. Instead, they are poised at critical points located at phase transitions in their parameter space. The pervasiveness of criticality suggests…
The hypothesis of self-organized criticality explains the existence of long-range `space-time' correlations, observed inseparably in many natural dynamical systems. A simple link between these correlations is yet unclear, particularly in…
Chaos is ubiquitous in high-dimensional neural dynamics. A strong chaotic fluctuation may be harmful to information processing. A traditional way to mitigate this issue is to introduce Hebbian plasticity, which can stabilize the dynamics.…
Spreading processes on networks are ubiquitous in both human-made and natural systems. Understanding their behavior is of broad interest; from the control of epidemics to understanding brain dynamics. While in some cases there exists a…
We propose a kind of Bak-Sneppen dynamics as a general optimization technique to treat magnetic systems. The resulting dynamics shows self-organized criticality with power law scaling of the spatial and temporal correlations. An alternative…
We consider a fully-connected network of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons with spike-timing-dependent plasticity. The plasticity is controlled by a parameter representing the expected weight of a synapse between neurons that are firing…
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…
We have investigated the essential ingredients allowing a system to show Self Organized Criticality (SOC) in its collective behavior. Using the Bak-Sneppen model of biological evolution as our paradigm, we show that the random microscopic…
Following extensive numerical experiments, it has been suggested that the evolution of competing computer programs in artificial life simulations shows signs of being a self-organized critical process. The primary evidence for this claim…
Self organisation provides an elegant explanation for how complex structures emerge and persist throughout nature. Surprisingly often, these structures exhibit remarkably similar scale-invariant properties. While this is sometimes captured…
By generalizing a class of models recently introduced to account for protracted transients in biological systems, we identify a novel mechanism for hyperuniformity. In this model, competition of particles over a shared resource guides the…
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…
Neural circuits exhibit remarkable computational flexibility, enabling adaptive responses to noisy and ever-changing environmental cues. A fundamental question in neuroscience concerns how a wide range of behaviors can emerge from a…
Rich, spontaneous brain activity has been observed across a range of different temporal and spatial scales. These dynamics are thought to be important t for efficient neural functioning. Experimental evidence suggests that these neural…
Learning and memory relies on synapses changing their strengths in response to neural activity. However there is a substantial gap between the timescales of neural electrical dynamics (1-100 ms) and organism behaviour during learning…
The brain is in a state of perpetual reverberant neural activity, even in the absence of specific tasks or stimuli. Shedding light on the origin and functional significance of such a dynamical state is essential to understanding how the…