The hypothesis that living neural networks operate near a critical phase transition point has
received substantial discussion. This “criticality hypothesis” is potentially important because …

Self-organized criticality has been proposed to be a universal mechanism for the emergence
of scale-free dynamics in many complex systems, and possibly in the brain. While such …

Despite the development of large-scale data-acquisition techniques, experimental
observations of complex systems are often limited to a tiny fraction of the system under …

Recent experimental results on spike avalanches measured in the urethane-anesthetized
rat cortex have revealed scaling relations that indicate a phase transition at a specific level …

It has been hypothesized that the brain optimizes its capacity for computation by self-
organizing to a critical point. The dynamical state of criticality is achieved by striking a …

Scaling relationships are key in characterizing complex systems at criticality. In the brain,
they are evident in neuronal avalanches—scale-invariant cascades of neuronal activity …

The human cortex is never at rest but in a state of sparse and noisy neural activity that can
be detected at broadly diverse resolution scales. It has been conjectured that such a state is …

The presumed proximity to a critical point is believed to endow the brain with scale-invariant
statistics, which are thought to confer various functional advantages in terms of its …

Naturally occurring body movements and collective neural activity both exhibit complex
dynamics, often with scale-free, fractal spatiotemporal structure. Scale-free dynamics of both …

Neurons in the cerebral cortex fire coincident action potentials during ongoing activity and in
response to sensory inputs. These synchronized cell assemblies are fundamental to cortex …