ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2012
Maximal variability of phase synchrony in cortical networks with neuronal avalanches.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 110 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
110 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A methodological guideline for consciousness assessment via neural electrophysiological activity.Military Medical Research · 2025Guideline
- Effect of depth of anesthesia on the phase lag entropy in patients undergoing general anesthesia by propofol: A STROBE-compliant study.Medicine · 2020Trial
- Self-organized criticality in aquatic robot swarm.Science advances · 2026Article
- Beyond Neural Noise: Critical Dynamics Predict Slower Reaction Times in Adults With and Without ADHD.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Synchrony is a robust iEEG biomarker for antiseizure medication load in epileptic patients.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Excitatory/Inhibitory Balance and Behavior in Children With Autism-A Randomized Controlled Study.Alpha psychiatry · 2025Article
- Self-organized and self-sustained ensemble activity patterns in simulation of mouse primary motor cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Metastable dynamics emerge from local excitatory-inhibitory homeostasis in the cortex at rest.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Multi-timescale neural dynamics for multisensory integration.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2024Review
- Existence of multiple transitions of the critical state due to anesthetics.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Imitating and exploring the human brain's resting and task-performing states via brain computing: scaling and architecture.National science review · 2024Article
- Local signal variability and functional connectivity: Sensitive measures of the excitation-inhibition ratio?Cognitive neurodynamics · 2024Article
- Trial-by-trial variability in cortical responses exhibits scaling of spatial correlations predicted from critical dynamics.Cell reports · 2024Article
- Criticality and partial synchronization analysis in Wilson-Cowan and Jansen-Rit neural mass models.PloS one · 2024Article
- The connectivity degree controls the difficulty in reservoir design of random boolean networks.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2024Article
- Stationary correlation pattern in highly non-stationary MEG recordings of healthy subjects and its relation to former EEG studies.PloS one · 2024Article
- Natural brain state change with E/I balance shifting toward inhibition is associated with vigilance impairment.iScience · 2023Article
- EEG Connectivity Diversity Differences between Children with Autism and Typically Developing Children: A Comparative Study.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Brain criticality predicts individual levels of inter-areal synchronization in human electrophysiological data.Nature communications · 2023Article
- The fractal brain: scale-invariance in structure and dynamics.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Review
50 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Ongoing interactions among cortical neurons often manifest as network-level synchrony. Understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of such spontaneous synchrony is important because it may (1) influence network response to input, (2) shape activity-dependent microcircuit structure, and (3) reveal fundamental network properties, such as an imbalance of excitation (E) and inhibition (I). Here we delineate the spatiotemporal character of spontaneous synchrony in rat cortex slice cultures and a computational model over a range of different E-I conditions including disfacilitated (antagonized AMPA, NMDA receptors), unperturbed, and disinhibited (antagonized GABA(A) receptors). Local field potential was recorded with multielectrode arrays during spontaneous burst activity. Synchrony among neuronal groups was quantified based on phase-locking among recording sites. As network excitability was increased from low to high, we discovered three phenomena at an intermediate excitability level: (1) onset of synchrony, (2) maximized variability of synchrony, and (3) neuronal avalanches. Our computational model predicted that these three features occur when the network operates near a unique balanced E-I condition called "criticality." These results were invariant to changes in the measurement spatial extent, spatial resolution, and frequency bands. Our findings indicate that moderate average synchrony, which is required to avoid pathology, occurs over a limited range of E-I conditions and emerges together with maximally variable synchrony. If variable synchrony is detrimental to cortical function, this is a cost paid for moderate average synchrony. However, if variable synchrony is beneficial, then by operating near criticality the cortex may doubly benefit from moderate mean and maximized variability of synchrony.
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