Related papers: Criticality at work: scaling in the mouse cortex e…
From 1/f noise to neuronal avalanches, evidence of scaling in brain activity has been increasingly linked to tuning to or near criticality. The concept of scaling is intimately related to the renormalization group (RG), in essence providing…
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…
Hallmarks of criticality, such as power-laws and scale invariance, have been empirically found in cortical networks and it has been conjectured that operating at criticality entails functional advantages, such as optimal computational…
Much evidence seems to suggest cortex operates near a critical point, yet a single set of exponents defining its universality class has not been found. In fact, when critical exponents are estimated from data, they widely differ across…
The brain processes visual inputs having structure over a large range of spatial scales. The precise mechanisms or algorithms used by the brain to achieve this feat are largely unknown and an open problem in visual neuroscience. In…
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…
We present a systematic study to test a recently introduced phenomenological renormalization group, proposed to coarse-grain data of neural activity from their correlation matrix. The approach allows, at least in principle, to establish…
The "criticality hypothesis", based on observed scale-free correlations in neural activity, posits that the brain operates at a critical point of transition between two phases. However, the validity of this hypothesis is still debated.…
Evidence of critical dynamics has been recently found in both experiments and models of large scale brain dynamics. The understanding of the nature and features of such critical regime is hampered by the relatively small size of the…
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…
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 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…
Dynamical criticality has been shown to enhance information processing in dynamical systems, and there is evidence for self-organized criticality in neural networks. A plausible mechanism for such self-organization is activity dependent…
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…
Recent experimental results based on multi-electrode and imaging techniques have reinvigorated the idea that large neural networks operate near a critical point, between order and disorder. However, evidence for criticality has relied on…
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…
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…
The observation of apparent power-laws in neuronal systems has led to the suggestion that the brain is at, or close to, a critical state and may be a self-organised critical system. Within the framework of self-organised criticality a…
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,…
Recent experimental observations have supported the hypothesis that the cerebral cortex operates in a dynamical regime near criticality, where the neuronal network exhibits a mixture of ordered and disordered patterns. However, A…