Second type of criticality in the brain uncovers rich multiple-neuron dynamics.

ABSTRACT: Cortical networks that have been found to operate close to a critical point exhibit joint activations of large numbers of neurons. However, in motor cortex of the awake macaque monkey, we observe very different dynamics: massively parallel recordings of 155 single-neuron spiking activities show weak fluctuations on the population level. This a priori suggests that motor cortex operates in a noncritical regime, which in models, has been found to be suboptimal for computational performance. However, here, we show the opposite: The large dispersion of correlations across neurons is the signature of a second critical regime. This regime exhibits a rich dynamical repertoire hidden from macroscopic brain signals but essential for high performance in such concepts as reservoir computing. An analy

SUBMITTER: Dahmen D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6600928 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature