Related papers: Criticality at work: scaling in the mouse cortex e…
Brain rhythms contribute to every aspect of brain function. Here, we study critical and resonance phenomena that precede the emergence of brain rhythms. Using an analytical approach and simulations of a cortical circuit model of neural…
Systems that exhibit complex behaviours are often found in a particular dynamical condition, poised between order and disorder. This observation is at the core of the so-called criticality hypothesis, which states that systems in a…
The critical brain hypothesis posits that neural circuitry operates near criticality to reap the computational benefits of accessing a wide range of timescales. The theory of critical phenomena generally predicts heavy-tailed (power-law)…
In this work, we report the preliminary analysis of the electrophysiological behavior of in vitro neuronal networks to identify when the networks are in a critical state based on the size distribution of network-wide avalanches of activity.…
Scale-invariant neuronal avalanches have been observed in cell cultures and slices as well as anesthetized and awake brains, suggesting that the brain operates near criticality, i.e. within a narrow margin between avalanche propagation and…
Self-organized criticality (SOC) refers to the ability of complex systems to evolve towards a 2nd-order phase transition at which interactions between system components lead to scale-invariant events beneficial for system performance. For…
A core challenge for the brain is to process information across various timescales. This could be achieved by a hierarchical organization of temporal processing through intrinsic mechanisms (e.g., recurrent coupling or adaptation), but…
Criticality can be exactly demonstrated in certain models of brain activity, yet it remains challenging to identify in empirical data. We trained a fully connected deep neural network to learn the phases of an excitable model unfolding on…
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…
Criticality has been proposed as a key principle underlying complex behavior in biological and artificial systems; however, how criticality translates from individual dynamics to collective behavior remains unclear. We study this question…
Complex systems, when poised near a critical point of a phase transition between order and disorder, exhibit a dynamics comprising a scale-free mixture of order and disorder which is universal, i.e. system-independent (1-5). It allows…
Scale free dynamics are observed in a variety of physical and biological systems. These include neural activity in which evidence for scale freeness has been reported using a range of imaging modalities. Here, we derive the ways in which…
Understanding the origin, nature, and functional significance of complex patterns of neural activity, as recorded by diverse electrophysiological and neuroimaging techniques, is a central challenge in neuroscience. Such patterns include…
Deciphering the underpinnings of the dynamical processes leading to information transmission, processing, and storing in the brain is a crucial challenge in neuroscience. An inspiring but speculative theoretical idea is that such dynamics…
Empirical evidence of scaling behaviors in neuronal avalanches suggests that neuronal populations in the brain operate near criticality. Departure from scaling in neuronal avalanches has been used as a measure of distance to criticality and…
Shedding light onto how biological systems represent, process and store information in noisy environments is a key and challenging goal. A stimulating, though controversial, hypothesis poses that operating in dynamical regimes near the edge…
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…
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…
We employ the machinery of smooth scaling and coarse-graining of observables, developed recently by us in the context of so-called fluctuation operators (inspired by prior work of Verbeure et al) to make a rigorous renormalisation group…
To set the stage for viewing Consciousness in terms of brain phase space dynamics and criticality, I will first review currently prominent theoretical conceptualizations and, where appropriate, identify ill-advised and flawed notions in…