Correlation functions as a tool to study collective behaviour phenomena in biological systems

Abstract

Much of interesting complex biological behaviour arises from collective properties. Important information about collective behaviour lies in the time and space structure of fluctuations around average properties, and two-point correlation functions are a fundamental tool to study these fluctuations. We give a self-contained presentation of definitions and techniques for computation of correlation functions aimed at providing students and researchers outside the field of statistical physics a practical guide to calculating correlation functions from experimental and simulation data. We discuss some properties of correlations in critical systems, and the effect of finite system size, which is particularly relevant for most biological experimental systems. Finally we apply these to the case of the dynamical transition in a simple neuronal model,

31 pages, 10 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2002.01750

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Scale-free correlations in the dynamics of a small (N ~ 10000) cortical network
• Self Tuned Criticality: Controlling a neuron near its bifurcation point via temporal correlations
• Finite-size correlation behavior near a critical point: a simple metric for monitoring the state of a neural network