Morrell Mia, Nemenman Ilya, Sederberg Audrey J
Department of Physics, New York University.
Department of Physics, Department of Biology, Initiative in Theory and Modeling of Living Systems, Emory University.
ArXiv. 2023 Oct 13:arXiv:2301.00759v3.
Observations of power laws in neural activity data have raised the intriguing notion that brains may operate in a critical state. One example of this critical state is "avalanche criticality," which has been observed in various systems, including cultured neurons, zebrafish, rodent cortex, and human EEG. More recently, power laws were also observed in neural populations in the mouse under an activity coarse-graining procedure, and they were explained as a consequence of the neural activity being coupled to multiple latent dynamical variables. An intriguing possibility is that avalanche criticality emerges due to a similar mechanism. Here, we determine the conditions under which latent dynamical variables give rise to avalanche criticality. We find that populations coupled to multiple latent variables produce critical behavior across a broader parameter range than those coupled to a single, quasi-static latent variable, but in both cases, avalanche criticality is observed without fine-tuning of model parameters. We identify two regimes of avalanches, both critical but differing in the amount of information carried about the latent variable. Our results suggest that avalanche criticality arises in neural systems in which activity is effectively modeled as a population driven by a few dynamical variables and these variables can be inferred from the population activity.
在神经活动数据中对幂律的观察引发了一个有趣的概念，即大脑可能处于临界状态运行。这种临界状态的一个例子是“雪崩临界性”，已在包括培养的神经元、斑马鱼、啮齿动物皮层和人类脑电图在内的各种系统中观察到。最近，在小鼠的神经群体中，在活动粗粒化过程下也观察到了幂律，并且它们被解释为神经活动与多个潜在动态变量耦合的结果。一个有趣的可能性是，雪崩临界性是由于类似的机制出现的。在这里，我们确定了潜在动态变量产生雪崩临界性的条件。我们发现，与耦合到单个准静态潜在变量的群体相比，耦合到多个潜在变量的群体在更广泛的参数范围内产生临界行为，但在这两种情况下，无需对模型参数进行微调就可以观察到雪崩临界性。我们确定了两种雪崩状态，两者都是临界的，但在携带关于潜在变量的信息量方面有所不同。我们的结果表明，雪崩临界性出现在这样的神经系统中，在该系统中，活动被有效地建模为由几个动态变量驱动的群体，并且这些变量可以从群体活动中推断出来。
