Related papers: Criticality at work: scaling in the mouse cortex e…
We demonstrate, both analytically and numerically, that learning dynamics of neural networks is generically attracted towards a self-organized critical state. The effect can be modeled with quartic interactions between non-trainable…
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…
It has long been hypothesized that operating close to the critical state is beneficial for natural, artificial and their evolutionary systems. We put this hypothesis to test in a system of evolving foraging agents controlled by neural…
The brain forms and stores distributed representations from sparse external input that compete for neuronal resources with already stored memory traces. It is unclear what dynamical properties of neural systems allow formation and…
We show that a coalescence equation exhibits a variety of critical behaviors, depending on the initial condition. This equation was introduced a few years ago to understand a toy model {studied by Derrida and Retaux to mimic} the depinning…
Cascading large-amplitude bursts in neural activity, termed avalanches, are thought to provide insight into the complex spatially distributed interactions in neural systems. In human neuroimaging, for example, avalanches occurring during…
Consciousness spans macroscopic experience and microscopic neuronal activity, yet linking these scales remains challenging. Prevailing theories, such as Integrated Information Theory, focus on a single scale, overlooking how causal power…
Understanding how the brain learns to compute functions reliably, efficiently and robustly with noisy spiking activity is a fundamental challenge in neuroscience. Most sensory and motor tasks can be described as dynamical systems and could…
Observations of power laws in neural activity data have raised the intriguing notion that brains may operate in a critical state. One example of this critical state is "avalanche criticality," which has been observed in various systems,…
Spontaneous neuronal activity is a ubiquitous feature of cortex. Its spatiotemporal organization reflects past input and modulates future network output. Here we study whether a particular type of spontaneous activity is generated by a…
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…
Stimulus from the environment that guides behavior and informs decisions is encoded in the firing rates of neural populations. Each neuron in the populations, however, does not spike independently: spike events are correlated from cell to…
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…
Converging research suggests that the resting brain operates at the cusp of dynamic instability signified by scale-free temporal correlations. We asked if the scaling properties of these correlations differ between amplitude and phase…
Neural systems process information across a broad range of intrinsic timescales, both within and across cortical areas. While such diversity is a hallmark of biological networks, its computational role in nonlinear information processing…
According to the criticality hypothesis, collective biological systems should operate in a special parameter region, close to so-called critical points, where the collective behavior undergoes a qualitative change between different…
Neural systems face the challenge of maintaining reliable representations amid variations from plasticity and spontaneous activity. In particular, the spontaneous dynamics in neuronal circuit is known to operate near a highly variable…
Humans and animals exhibit a range of interesting behaviors in dynamic environments, and it is unclear how our brains actively reformat this dense sensory information to enable these behaviors. Experimental neuroscience is undergoing a…
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…
Inferring the presence of critical dynamics from continuous measure- ments is a challenging problem. We solve this problem by showing that continuous narrowband dynamics from a critical system exhibit qualita- tively differing behaviors…