Related papers: Representational drift under spontaneous activity …
The dynamics of local cortical networks are irregular, but correlated. Dynamic excitatory--inhibitory balance is a plausible mechanism that generates such irregular activity, but it remains unclear how balance is achieved and maintained in…
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,…
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…
Self-organization of neural circuitry is an appealing framework for understanding cortical development, yet its applicability remains unconfirmed. Models for the self-organization of neural circuits have been proposed, but experimentally…
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.…
The "binding problem" of how distributed neural activity unifies into conscious experience has remained an open challenge since its articulation in 1890. We present evidence that conscious integration relies on self-organized criticality…
A key question in neuroscience is at which level functional meaning emerges from biophysical phenomena. In most vertebrate systems, precise functions are assigned at the level of neural populations, while single-neurons are deemed…
Self-organized criticality is characterized by power law correlations in the non-equilibrium steady state of externally driven systems. A dynamical system proposed here self-organizes itself to a critical state with no characteristic size…
In neural circuits, synaptic strengths influence neuronal activity by shaping network dynamics, and neuronal activity influences synaptic strengths through activity-dependent plasticity. Motivated by this fact, we study a recurrent-network…
We investigate the synaptic noise as a novel mechanism for creating critical avalanches in the activity of neural networks. We model neurons and chemical synapses by dynamical maps with a uniform noise term in the synaptic coupling. An…
Phase transitions and critical behavior are crucial issues both in theoretical and experimental neuroscience. We report analytic and computational results about phase transitions and self-organized criticality (SOC) in networks with general…
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…
In the last decade, several models with network adaptive mechanisms (link deletion-creation, dynamic synapses, dynamic gains) have been proposed as examples of self-organized criticality (SOC) to explain neuronal avalanches. However, all…
Various functions of a network of excitable units can be enhanced if the network is in the `critical regime', where excitations are, on average, neither damped nor amplified. An important question is how can such networks self-organize to…
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…
Understanding the relationship between large-scale structural and functional brain networks remains a crucial issue in modern neuroscience. Recently, there has been growing interest in investigating the role of homeostatic plasticity…
Cortical oscillations are thought to be involved in many cognitive functions and processes. Several mechanisms have been proposed to regulate oscillations. One prominent but understudied mechanism is gap-junctional coupling. Gap junctions…
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…
Advancing our knowledge of how the brain processes information remains a key challenge in neuroscience. This thesis combines three different approaches to the study of the dynamics of neural networks and their encoding representations: a…
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…