Scale-Free Dynamics in Animal Groups and Brain Networks
Tiago L Ribeiro1, Dante R Chialvo2,3, Dietmar Plenz1
1Section on Critical Brain Dynamics, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States.
Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
|February 8, 2021
Summary
Collective phenomena, like bird flocking and brain activity, show similar organizational patterns. This suggests neuronal information processing may occur efficiently near phase transitions.
Area of Science:
- Complex Systems
- Neuroscience
- Animal Behavior
Background:
- Collective phenomena exhibit emergent order from simple components.
- Such phenomena are observed across natural systems at various scales.
- Adaptive collective behavior is a key feature, not easily explained by individual properties.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore similarities in correlations between animal group flocking and brain neuronal activity.
- To apply methods from critical dynamics and correlation functions to neuronal data.
- To investigate neuronal avalanches and their organization in primate and rodent brains.
Main Methods:
- Summarizing findings on spontaneous organization in bird flocks and human brain activity.
- Utilizing correlation functions and critical dynamics insights.
- Analyzing experimental data on collective neuronal responses to visual and motor processing.
Main Results:
- Scale-free correlation functions effectively capture neuronal avalanche organization.
- Coherent collective neural activity suggests a phase transition.
- Experimental evidence supports both discontinuous and continuous phase transitions.
Conclusions:
- Neuronal information propagation may be highly efficient near phase transitions.
- This efficiency parallels adaptive collective responses seen in animal groups.
- The study highlights universal principles in collective behavior across disparate systems.
Keywords:
brain dynamicscorrelationscriticalityflockingmutual informationneuronal networkscale-freesynchronization
