Critical Scaling of Novelty in the Cortex.

ABSTRACT: The ability to detect and transmit novel events is essential for adaptive behavior in uncertain environments. Here, we investigate how holographically triggered, unanticipated action potentials propagate through the primary visual cortex of resting mice, focusing on pyramidal neuron communication. We find that these novel spikes - uncorrelated with ongoing activity - exert a disproportionately large influence on neighboring neurons, whose response scales as a power law (exponent ~0.2-0.3). Even a few such spikes can recruit a large fraction of the local network, enabling robust decoding of perturbation origin despite high trial-by-trial variability and ongoing activity dominated by large activity fluctuations in the form of scale-invariant, parabolic neuronal avalanches. Simulations confir

SUBMITTER: Ribeiro TL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12407764 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature