Related papers: Criticality at work: scaling in the mouse cortex e…
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…
A major unresolved question in Neuroscience is: What is the origin of the observed scale-invariant correlations in neural activity? Many researchers support the ``criticality hypothesis,'' which proposes that the brain operates near…
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 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…
Cognitive function requires the coordination of neural activity across many scales, from neurons and circuits to large-scale networks. As such, it is unlikely that an explanatory framework focused upon any single scale will yield a…
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 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…
Many studies have found evidence that the brain operates at a critical point, a processus known as self-organized criticality. A recent paper found remarkable scalings suggestive of criticality in systems as different as neural cultures,…
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…
Criticality is hypothesized as a physical mechanism underlying efficient transitions between cortical states and remarkable information processing capacities in the brain. While considerable evidence generally supports this hypothesis,…
A celebrated and controversial hypothesis conjectures that some biological systems --parts, aspects, or groups of them-- may extract important functional benefits from operating at the edge of instability, halfway between order and…
Criticality in the cortex emerges from the seemingly random interaction of microscopic components and produces higher cognitive functions at mesoscopic and macroscopic scales. Random graphs and percolation theory provide natural means to…
The critical state is assumed to be optimal for any computation in recurrent neural networks, because criticality maximizes a number of abstract computational properties. We challenge this assumption by evaluating the performance of a…
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…
Neural networks with equal excitatory and inhibitory feedback show high computational performance. They operate close to a critical point characterized by the joint activation of large populations of neurons. Yet, in macaque motor cortex we…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…