Criticality is the singular state of complex systems poised at the brink of a phase transition
between order and randomness. Such systems display remarkable information-processing …

Cognitive function requires the coordination of neural activity across many scales, from
neurons and circuits to large-scale networks. As such, it is unlikely that an explanatory …

The past 25 years have seen a strong increase in the number of publications related to
criticality in different areas of neuroscience. The potential of criticality to explain various …

The neural criticality hypothesis states that the brain may be poised in a critical state at a
boundary between different types of dynamics. Theoretical and experimental studies show …

Universality is a powerful concept, which enables making qualitative and quantitative
predictions in systems with extensively many degrees of freedom. It finds realizations in …

Hallmarks of criticality, such as power-laws and scale invariance, have been empirically
found in cortical-network dynamics and it has been conjectured that operating at criticality …

Power laws and distributions with heavy tails are common features of many complex
systems. Examples are the distribution of earthquake magnitudes, solar flare intensities and …

Understanding the origin, nature, and functional significance of complex patterns of neural
activity, as recorded by diverse electrophysiological and neuroimaging techniques, is a …

In self-organized critical (SOC) systems avalanche size distributions follow power-laws.
Power-laws have also been observed for neural activity, and so it has been proposed that …

Much evidence seems to suggest the cortex operates near a critical point, yet a single set of
exponents defining its universality class has not been found. In fact, when critical exponents …