Related papers: Covariance Plasticity and Regulated Criticality
Cognitive function is driven by dynamic interactions between large-scale neural circuits or networks, enabling behavior. Fundamental principles constraining these dynamic network processes have remained elusive. Here we use network control…
Can lifetime learning expand behavioral diversity over evolutionary time, rather than collapsing it? Prior theory predicts that plasticity reduces variance by buffering organisms against environmental noise. We test this in a competitive…
The state space of a conventional Hopfield network typically exhibits many different attractors of which only a small subset satisfy constraints between neurons in a globally optimal fashion. It has recently been demonstrated that combining…
Extended numerical simulations of threshold models have been performed on a human brain network with N=836733 connected nodes available from the Open Connectome project. While in case of simple threshold models a sharp discontinuous phase…
We present experimental and theoretical arguments, at the single neuron level, suggesting that neuronal response fluctuations reflect a process that positions the neuron near a transition point that separates excitable and unexcitable…
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…
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 human brain exhibits a relatively stable spatiotemporal organization that supports brain function and can be manipulated via local brain stimulation. Such perturbations to local cortical dynamics are globally integrated by distinct…
Understanding how biological neural networks are shaped via local plasticity mechanisms can lead to energy-efficient and self-adaptive information processing systems, which promises to mitigate some of the current roadblocks in edge…
Is the brain really operating at a critical point? We study the non-equilibrium properties of a neural network which models the dynamics of the neocortex and argue for optimal quasi-critical dynamics on the Widom line where the correlation…
Chaos is ubiquitous in high-dimensional neural dynamics. A strong chaotic fluctuation may be harmful to information processing. A traditional way to mitigate this issue is to introduce Hebbian plasticity, which can stabilize the dynamics.…
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…
Developmental approaches to neural architecture search grow functional networks from compact genomes through self-organisation, but the resulting networks operate with fixed post-growth weights. We characterise Hebbian and anti-Hebbian…
Neuronal heterogeneity, characterized by the presence of a multitude of spiking neuronal patterns, is a widespread phenomenon throughout the nervous system. In particular, the brain exhibits strong variability among inhibitory neurons.…
Our mysterious brain is believed to operate near a non-equilibrium point and generate critical self-organized avalanches in neuronal activity. Recent experimental evidence has revealed significant heterogeneity in both synaptic input 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…
Lifelong learning and adaptability are two defining aspects of biological agents. Modern reinforcement learning (RL) approaches have shown significant progress in solving complex tasks, however once training is concluded, the found…
Neurons regulate the distribution of signaling components across an extended tree-like cellular structure using both local and global feedback control. This is hypothesized to allow homeostatic control of the electrical activity of a neuron…
While criticality is widely observed in neural networks, its underlying neural mechanism is not known well. We consider a network of $N$ excitatory leaky integrated and fire (LIF) neurons that reside on a regular lattice with periodic…
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…