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Updated: Jan 22, 2026

Inducing Plasticity of Astrocytic Receptors by Manipulation of Neuronal Firing Rates
Published on: March 20, 2014
Dynamical phase transition in spike neuronal firing patterns of hippocampal cells
Jorge Bravo-Martínez1, Ana Leonor Rivera2, Juan Claudio Toledo-Roy2
1Departamento de Fisiología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico; Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad, UNAM, Mexico.
Abstract:
There is increasing evidence that the brain resides in a state of criticality. The purpose of the present work is to characterize the dynamics of individual hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells and to investigate how it is influenced by changes in Kv7.2/7.3 (M-channel) ion channel modulation, which is known to be key in determining the neuronal excitability. We show that the resting activity of CA1 neurons exhibit random dynamics with low information content, while changes in M-channel modulation move the neuronal activity near a phase transition to richer non-trivial dynamics. We interpret these results as the basis upon which the state of self-organized criticality is built.
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