Related papers: Memory in neural activity: long-range order withou…
Short-term memory is essential for cognitive processing, yet our understanding of its neural mechanisms remains unclear. Neuroscience has long focused on how sequential activity patterns, where neurons fire one after another within large…
Short-term memory in the brain cannot in general be explained the way long-term memory can -- as a gradual modification of synaptic weights -- since it takes place too quickly. Theories based on some form of cellular bistability, however,…
It has long been argued that neural networks have to establish and maintain a certain intermediate level of activity in order to keep away from the regimes of chaos and silence. Strong evidence for criticality has been observed in terms of…
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…
In recent years self organised critical neuronal models have provided insights regarding the origin of the experimentally observed avalanching behaviour of neuronal systems. It has been shown that dynamical synapses, as a form of short-term…
The neural networks of the human brain act as very efficient parallel processing computers co-ordinating memory related responses to a multitude of input signals from sensory organs. Information storage, update and appropriate retrieval are…
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…
In contrast to the critical brain hypothesis in which the brain tunes itself to a critical point between $states$ of chaos and order, analysis of Coordination Dynamics suggests that a vast repertoire of $coexisting$ $tendencies$ exists for…
Neural avalanches are collective firings of neurons that exhibit emergent scale-free behavior. Understanding the nature and distribution of these avalanches is an important element in understanding how the brain functions. We study a model…
Cortical neurons exhibit a hierarchy of timescales across brain regions in response to input stimuli, which is thought to be crucial for information processing of different temporal scales. Modeling studies suggest that both intra-regional…
A rigorous understanding of brain dynamics and function requires a conceptual bridge between multiple levels of organization, including neural spiking and network-level population activity. Mounting evidence suggests that neural networks of…
Critical branching is a theoretical interaction in-between simple units, such as neuronal elements of the human brain. Zhigalov, Kaplan, and Palva (2016, Clin. Neurophysiol., 127(8), 2882-2889) revealed that neurofeedback flash stimulation…
Neural synchronisation plays a critical role in information processing, storage and transmission. Characterising the pattern of synchronisation is therefore of great interest. It has recently been suggested that the brain displays broadband…
"You never forget how to ride a bike", -- but how is that possible? The brain is able to learn complex skills, stop the practice for years, learn other skills in between, and still retrieve the original knowledge when necessary. The…
The "critical brain hypothesis" posits that neural circuitry may be tuned close to a "critical point" or "phase transition" -- a boundary between different operating regimes of the circuit. The renormalization group and theory of critical…
Recent physiological measurements have provided clear evidence about scale-free avalanche brain activity and EEG spectra, feeding the classical enigma of how such a chaotic system can ever learn or respond in a controlled and reproducible…
Understanding the activity of large populations of neurons is difficult due to the combinatorial complexity of possible cell-cell interactions. To reduce the complexity, coarse-graining had been previously applied to experimental neural…
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…
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…
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…