ArticleCell reports2024
Trial-by-trial variability in cortical responses exhibits scaling of spatial correlations predicted from critical dynamics.
Article in Cell reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Is criticality a unified setpoint of brain function?Neuron · 2025Pooled it
- On variability in local field potentials.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Hierarchical Summary Statistics Encoding Across Primary Visual and Posterior Parietal Cortices.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Power Laws in Empirical Eigenvalue Spectra.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- A high-precision synchronization and centroid-based framework for single-trial decoding of perceived natural speech.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- Neural Response Reliability as a Marker of the Transition of Neural Codes along Auditory Pathways.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Patchy harmonic functional connectivity of the mouse auditory cortex.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The recovery of parabolic avalanches in spatially subsampled neuronal networks at criticality.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Single neuron responses to perceptual difficulty in the mouse auditory cortex.Science advances · 2024Article
- The recovery of parabolic avalanches in spatially subsampled neuronal networks at criticality.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Low-dimensional criticality embedded in high-dimensional awake brain dynamics.Science advances · 2024Article
- Effects of stochastic coding on olfactory discrimination in flies and mice.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Spatial and temporal correlations in human cortex are inherently linked and predicted by functional hierarchy, vigilance state as well as antiepileptic drug load.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Recovery of neural dynamics criticality in personalized whole-brain models of stroke.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Disentangling the critical signatures of neural activity.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Box scaling as a proxy of finite size correlations.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Selective Participation of Single Cortical Neurons in Neuronal Avalanches.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2020Article
- Scale-Free Dynamics in Animal Groups and Brain Networks.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In the mammalian cortex, even simple sensory inputs or movements activate many neurons, with each neuron responding variably to repeated stimuli-a phenomenon known as trial-by-trial variability. Understanding the spatial patterns and dynamics of this variability is challenging. Using cellular 2-photon imaging, we study visual and auditory responses in the primary cortices of awake mice. We focus on how individual neurons' responses differed from the overall population. We find consistent spatial correlations in these differences that are unique to each trial and linearly scale with the cortical area observed, a characteristic of critical dynamics as confirmed in our neuronal simulations. Using chronic multi-electrode recordings, we observe similar scaling in the prefrontal and premotor cortex of non-human primates during self-initiated and visually cued motor tasks. These results suggest that trial-by-trial variability, rather than being random noise, reflects a critical, fluctuation-dominated state in the cortex, supporting the brain's efficiency in processing information.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.