ArticlePLoS computational biology2018
Can a time varying external drive give rise to apparent criticality in neural systems?
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Hippocampal criticality tracks cognitive demand and shifts with memory impairment.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Power-law adaptation in the presynaptic vesicle cycle.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Measurement effects on critical scaling in neural systems.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2025Article
- The recovery of parabolic avalanches in spatially subsampled neuronal networks at criticality.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Collective dynamics and long-range order in thermal neuristor networks.Nature communications · 2024Article
- A General, Noise-Driven Mechanism for the 1/f-Like Behavior of Neural Field Spectra.Neural computation · 2024Article
- The recovery of parabolic avalanches in spatially subsampled neuronal networks at criticality.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
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- Emergence of brain-inspired small-world spiking neural network through neuroevolution.iScience · 2024Article
- Fluctuating landscapes and heavy tails in animal behavior.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
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- Exploring the criticality hypothesis using programmable swarm robots with Vicsek-like interactions.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- The fractal brain: scale-invariance in structure and dynamics.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Review
- Sampling effects and measurement overlap can bias the inference of neuronal avalanches.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Disentangling the critical signatures of neural activity.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Addressing skepticism of the critical brain hypothesis.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2022Review
- Criticality, Connectivity, and Neural Disorder: A Multifaceted Approach to Neural Computation.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2021Review
- Control of criticality and computation in spiking neuromorphic networks with plasticity.Nature communications · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The finding of power law scaling in neural recordings lends support to the hypothesis of critical brain dynamics. However, power laws are not unique to critical systems and can arise from alternative mechanisms. Here, we investigate whether a common time-varying external drive to a set of Poisson units can give rise to neuronal avalanches and exhibit apparent criticality. To this end, we analytically derive the avalanche size and duration distributions, as well as additional measures, first for homogeneous Poisson activity, and then for slowly varying inhomogeneous Poisson activity. We show that homogeneous Poisson activity cannot give rise to power law distributions. Inhomogeneous activity can also not generate perfect power laws, but it can exhibit approximate power laws with cutoffs that are comparable to those typically observed in experiments. The mechanism of generating apparent criticality by time-varying external fields, forces or input may generalize to many other systems like dynamics of swarms, diseases or extinction cascades. Here, we illustrate the analytically derived effects for spike recordings in vivo and discuss approaches to distinguish true from apparent criticality. Ultimately, this requires causal interventions, which allow separating internal system properties from externally imposed ones.
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