The brain: What is critical about it?

Abstract

We review the recent proposal that the most fascinating brain properties are related to the fact that it always stays close to a second order phase transition. In such conditions, the collective of neuronal groups can reliably generate robust and flexible behavior, because it is known that at the critical point there is the largest abundance of metastable states to choose from. Here we review the motivation, arguments and recent results, as well as further implications of this view of the functioning brain.

Proceedings of BIOCOMP2007 - Collective Dynamics: Topics on Competition and Cooperation in the Biosciences. Vietri sul Mare, Italy (2007)

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• Modelling on the very large-scale connectome
• Criticality & Deep Learning II: Momentum Renormalisation Group
• Fractals in the Nervous System: conceptual Implications for Theoretical Neuroscience
• Interplay between Network Topology and Dynamics in Neural Systems