Related papers: A Critical Assessment of the Brain Criticality Hyp…
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 systems operate near a phase transition, optimizing the processing of information. While scale invariance and non-Gaussian dynamics--hallmarks of criticality--have been observed in brain…
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.…
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…
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…
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,…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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 contrast to the critical brain hypothesis in which the brain tunes itself to a critical point between $states$ of chaos and order, analysis of Coordination Dynamics suggests that a vast repertoire of $coexisting$ $tendencies$ exists for…
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…
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…
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…
Criticality, observed during second-order phase transitions, is an emergent phenomenon. The brain operates near criticality, where complex systems exhibit high correlations. The critical brain hypothesis suggests that the brain becomes an…
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…
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…
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…
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…