Criticality in the brain: A synthesis of neurobiology, models and cognition

Abstract

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 comprehensive theory of brain activity and cognitive function. Modelling and analysis methods for neuroscience should aim to accommodate multiscale phenomena. Emerging research now suggests that multi-scale processes in the brain arise from so-called critical phenomena that occur very broadly in the natural world. Criticality arises in complex systems perched between order and disorder, and is marked by fluctuations that do not have any privileged spatial or temporal scale. We review the core nature of criticality, the evidence supporting its role in neural systems and its explanatory potential in brain health and disease.

44 pages, 5 figures

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• Power-law distributions in empirical data
• Emergent complex neural dynamics
• Dynamical synapses causing self-organized criticality in neural networks
• Self-Organized Criticality model for Brain Plasticity
• Spike Avalanches Exhibit Universal Dynamics across the Sleep-Wake Cycle
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• Critical and maximally informative encoding between neural populations in the retina
• Coexistence of critical sensitivity and subcritical specificity can yield optimal population coding
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Cited by in corpus (25)

• Self-organization toward criticality by synaptic plasticity
• Feedback mechanisms for self-organization to the edge of a phase transition
• Modular architecture facilitates noise-driven control of synchrony in neuronal networks
• Theoretical foundations of studying criticality in the brain
• Self-organized bistability and its possible relevance for brain dynamics
• Assessing criticality in pre-seizure single-neuron activity of human epileptic cortex
• Less is More: Wiring-Economical Modular Networks Support Self-Sustained Firing-Economical Neural Avalanches for Efficient Processing
• The broad edge of synchronisation: Griffiths effects and collective phenomena in brain networks
• Fluctuating landscapes and heavy tails in animal behavior
• Tracking the distance to criticality in systems with unknown noise
• Adaptive rewiring of random neural networks generates convergent-divergent units
• Scale-specific dynamics of large-amplitude bursts in EEG capture behaviorally meaningful variability
• Nonequilibrium physics of brain dynamics
• Spatial-temporal analysis of neural desynchronization in sleep-like states reveals critical dynamics
• Investigating structural and functional aspects of the brain's criticality in stroke
• Assessing the robustness of critical behavior in stochastic cellular automata
• Global excitability and network structure in the human brain
• Can biological quantum networks solve NP-hard problems?
• Love might be a second-order phase transition
• Thermodynamic Formalism in Neuronal Dynamics and Spike Train Statistics
• Optimal input reverberation and homeostatic self-organization towards the edge of synchronization
• Chaos-based reinforcement learning with TD3
• Phase transitions in in vivo or in vitro populations of spiking neurons belong to different universality classes
• Evolving fractal dimensions in iterative bicolored percolation
• Emergent complexity and rhythms in evoked and spontaneous dynamics of human whole-brain models after tuning through analysis tools