Hancock Fran, Rosas Fernando E, Luppi Andrea I, Zhang Mengsen, Mediano Pedro A M, Cabral Joana, Deco Gustavo, Kringelbach Morten L, Breakspear Michael, Kelso J A Scott, Turkheimer Federico E
Department of Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
Nat Rev Neurosci. 2025 Feb;26(2):82-100. doi: 10.1038/s41583-024-00883-1. Epub 2024 Dec 11.
Healthy brain function depends on balancing stable integration between brain areas for effective coordinated functioning, with coexisting segregation that allows subsystems to express their functional specialization. Metastability, a concept from the dynamical systems literature, has been proposed as a key signature that characterizes this balance. Building on this principle, the neuroscience literature has leveraged the phenomenon of metastability to investigate various aspects of brain function in health and disease. However, this body of work often uses the notion of metastability heuristically, and sometimes inaccurately, making it difficult to navigate the vast literature, interpret findings and foster further development of theoretical and experimental methodologies. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of metastability and its applications in neuroscience, covering its scientific and historical foundations and the practical measures used to assess it in empirical data. We also provide a critical analysis of recent theoretical developments, clarifying common misconceptions and paving the road for future developments.
健康的大脑功能依赖于大脑区域之间稳定整合与共存的隔离之间的平衡，以实现有效的协调运作，其中稳定整合有助于有效协调运作，而共存的隔离则使子系统能够发挥其功能特化。亚稳定性是动力系统文献中的一个概念，已被提出作为表征这种平衡的关键特征。基于这一原理，神经科学文献利用亚稳定性现象来研究健康和疾病状态下大脑功能的各个方面。然而，这一系列研究工作常常是试探性地使用亚稳定性概念，有时甚至不准确，这使得在浩如烟海的文献中进行梳理、解读研究结果以及推动理论和实验方法的进一步发展变得困难。在此，我们对亚稳定性及其在神经科学中的应用进行全面综述，涵盖其科学和历史基础以及用于在实证数据中评估它的实际方法。我们还对近期的理论发展进行批判性分析，澄清常见的误解，并为未来的发展铺平道路。
