The Cortex And The Critical Point
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The Cortex And The Critical Point
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Author : John M. Beggs
language : en
Publisher: MIT Press
Release Date : 2022-08-30
The Cortex And The Critical Point written by John M. Beggs and has been published by MIT Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-08-30 with Science categories.
How the cerebral cortex operates near a critical phase transition point for optimum performance. Individual neurons have limited computational powers, but when they work together, it is almost like magic. Firing synchronously and then breaking off to improvise by themselves, they can be paradoxically both independent and interdependent. This happens near the critical point: when neurons are poised between a phase where activity is damped and a phase where it is amplified, where information processing is optimized, and complex emergent activity patterns arise. The claim that neurons in the cortex work best when they operate near the critical point is known as the criticality hypothesis. In this book John Beggs—one of the pioneers of this hypothesis—offers an introduction to the critical point and its relevance to the brain. Drawing on recent experimental evidence, Beggs first explains the main ideas underlying the criticality hypotheses and emergent phenomena. He then discusses the critical point and its two main consequences—first, scale-free properties that confer optimum information processing; and second, universality, or the idea that complex emergent phenomena, like that seen near the critical point, can be explained by relatively simple models that are applicable across species and scale. Finally, Beggs considers future directions for the field, including research on homeostatic regulation, quasicriticality, and the expansion of the cortex and intelligence. An appendix provides technical material; many chapters include exercises that use freely available code and data sets.
The Cortex And The Critical Point
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Author : John M. Beggs
language : en
Publisher: MIT Press
Release Date : 2022-08-30
The Cortex And The Critical Point written by John M. Beggs and has been published by MIT Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-08-30 with Science categories.
How the cerebral cortex operates near a critical phase transition point for optimum performance. Individual neurons have limited computational powers, but when they work together, it is almost like magic. Firing synchronously and then breaking off to improvise by themselves, they can be paradoxically both independent and interdependent. This happens near the critical point: when neurons are poised between a phase where activity is damped and a phase where it is amplified, where information processing is optimized, and complex emergent activity patterns arise. The claim that neurons in the cortex work best when they operate near the critical point is known as the criticality hypothesis. In this book John Beggs—one of the pioneers of this hypothesis—offers an introduction to the critical point and its relevance to the brain. Drawing on recent experimental evidence, Beggs first explains the main ideas underlying the criticality hypotheses and emergent phenomena. He then discusses the critical point and its two main consequences—first, scale-free properties that confer optimum information processing; and second, universality, or the idea that complex emergent phenomena, like that seen near the critical point, can be explained by relatively simple models that are applicable across species and scale. Finally, Beggs considers future directions for the field, including research on homeostatic regulation, quasicriticality, and the expansion of the cortex and intelligence. An appendix provides technical material; many chapters include exercises that use freely available code and data sets.
Elusive Cures
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Author : Nicole Rust
language : en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date : 2025-06-10
Elusive Cures written by Nicole Rust and has been published by Princeton University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2025-06-10 with Health & Fitness categories.
"Neuroscience has made massive progress in the last thirty years-we've seen multiple forms of technology revolutionize the field, and we've invested tremendous resources to pursue brain research globally. Though we've learned much about the brain through these efforts, we have struggled to translate what we are learning to treatments for mental illness. Tragically, we cannot cure-or in some cases reliably treat-most brain disorders, including Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, depression, schizophrenia, and so many more. Why have we struggled so much to translate the exploding number of discoveries that are happening at the research bench to the bedside? How can we better understand and treat brain and mental illness? In this book, Nicole Rust tackles these difficult questions, making a bold argument for how the field of neuroscience needs to change in order to make meaningful progress on understanding and treating brain dysfunction. In short, her argument is that neuroscientists must adapt to thinking about the brain as a complex system. To date, we have collectively thought about the brain more as a domino chain of cause-and-effect - for instance, if we assume that a chemical imbalance causes depression, we assume that once we fix that imbalance, we will fix depression. But as Rust shows, the brain is much more complex than a domino chain, operating via feedback loops that are more difficult to understand and predict. In Part I, Rust examines the people and the science behind the brain drugs that are prescribed today, setting up her argument that the field must change in order to progress; she shows that most of our current treatments - for depression, psychosis, and other disorders -- were developed serendipitously. In fact, most of the drugs that we use today were created in the 50s, before we understood anything at all about how the brain works. In Parts 2 and 3, Rust presents her argument for how the field can advance: by treating the brain as a complex system. In highly accessible language and drawing on the history of complex systems in other scientific fields, as well as cutting edge work in translational neuroscience today, she shows how some researchers are already pushing towards the idea of the brain as a complex system - and argues that only once we fully embrace this idea do we have any hope of curing the brain in dysfunction. The book is a fascinating window into the immense challenge of understanding the brain - the most complex thing humankind has ever encountered - and how we can change course to make more and better progress towards mental health"--
Neural Fields
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Author : Stephen Coombes
language : en
Publisher: Springer
Release Date : 2014-06-17
Neural Fields written by Stephen Coombes and has been published by Springer this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014-06-17 with Mathematics categories.
Neural field theory has a long-standing tradition in the mathematical and computational neurosciences. Beginning almost 50 years ago with seminal work by Griffiths and culminating in the 1970ties with the models of Wilson and Cowan, Nunez and Amari, this important research area experienced a renaissance during the 1990ties by the groups of Ermentrout, Robinson, Bressloff, Wright and Haken. Since then, much progress has been made in both, the development of mathematical and numerical techniques and in physiological refinement und understanding. In contrast to large-scale neural network models described by huge connectivity matrices that are computationally expensive in numerical simulations, neural field models described by connectivity kernels allow for analytical treatment by means of methods from functional analysis. Thus, a number of rigorous results on the existence of bump and wave solutions or on inverse kernel construction problems are nowadays available. Moreover, neural fields provide an important interface for the coupling of neural activity to experimentally observable data, such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). And finally, neural fields over rather abstract feature spaces, also called dynamic fields, found successful applications in the cognitive sciences and in robotics. Up to now, research results in neural field theory have been disseminated across a number of distinct journals from mathematics, computational neuroscience, biophysics, cognitive science and others. There is no comprehensive collection of results or reviews available yet. With our proposed book Neural Field Theory, we aim at filling this gap in the market. We received consent from some of the leading scientists in the field, who are willing to write contributions for the book, among them are two of the founding-fathers of neural field theory: Shun-ichi Amari and Jack Cowan.
Cognitive Phase Transitions In The Cerebral Cortex Enhancing The Neuron Doctrine By Modeling Neural Fields
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Author : Robert Kozma
language : en
Publisher: Springer
Release Date : 2015-10-30
Cognitive Phase Transitions In The Cerebral Cortex Enhancing The Neuron Doctrine By Modeling Neural Fields written by Robert Kozma and has been published by Springer this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2015-10-30 with Technology & Engineering categories.
This intriguing book was born out of the many discussions the authors had in the past 10 years about the role of scale-free structure and dynamics in producing intelligent behavior in brains. The microscopic dynamics of neural networks is well described by the prevailing paradigm based in a narrow interpretation of the neuron doctrine. This book broadens the doctrine by incorporating the dynamics of neural fields, as first revealed by modeling with differential equations (K-sets). The book broadens that approach by application of random graph theory (neuropercolation). The book concludes with diverse commentaries that exemplify the wide range of mathematical/conceptual approaches to neural fields. This book is intended for researchers, postdocs, and graduate students, who see the limitations of network theory and seek a beachhead from which to embark on mesoscopic and macroscopic neurodynamics.
Connectivity Driven Parcellation Methods For The Human Cerebral Cortex
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Author : Salim Arslan
language : en
Publisher: Salim Arslan
Release Date : 2017-11-01
Connectivity Driven Parcellation Methods For The Human Cerebral Cortex written by Salim Arslan and has been published by Salim Arslan this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-11-01 with Computers categories.
The macro connectome elucidates the pathways through which brain regions are structurally connected or functionally coupled to perform cognitive functions. It embodies the notion of representing, analysing, and understanding all connections within the brain as a network, while the subdivision of the brain into interacting cortical units is inherent in its architecture. As a result, the definition of network nodes is one of the most critical steps in connectivity network analysis. Parcellations derived from anatomical brain atlases or random parcellations are traditionally used for node identification, however these approaches do not always fully reflect the functional/structural organisation of the brain. Connectivity-driven methods have arisen only recently, aiming to delineate parcellations that are more faithful to the underlying connectivity. Such parcellation methods face several challenges, including but not limited to poor signal-to-noise ratio, the curse of dimensionality, and functional/structural variations inherent in individual brains, which are only limitedly addressed by the current state of the art. In this thesis, we present robust and fully-automated methods for the subdivision of the entire human cerebral cortex based on connectivity information. Our contributions are four-fold: First, we propose a clustering approach to delineate a cortical parcellation that provides a reliable abstraction of the brain's functional organisation. Second, we cast the parcellation problem as a feature reduction problem and make use of manifold learning and image segmentation techniques to identify cortical regions with distinct structural connectivity patterns. Third, we present a multi-layer graphical model that combines within- and between-subject connectivity, which is then decomposed into a cortical parcellation that can represent the whole population, while accounting for the variability across subjects. Finally, we conduct a large-scale, systematic comparison of existing parcellation methods, with a focus on providing some insight into the reliability of brain parcellations in terms of reflecting the underlying connectivity, as well as, revealing their impact on network analysis. We evaluate the proposed parcellation methods on publicly available data from the Human Connectome Project and a plethora of quantitative and qualitative evaluation techniques investigated in the literature. Experiments across multiple resolutions demonstrate the accuracy of the presented methods at both subject and group levels with regards to reproducibility and fidelity to the data. The neuro-biological interpretation of the proposed parcellations is also investigated by comparing parcel boundaries with well-structured properties of the cerebral cortex. Results show the advantage of connectivity-driven parcellations over traditional approaches in terms of better fitting the underlying connectivity. However, the benefit of using connectivity to parcellate the brain is not always as clear regarding the agreement with other modalities and simple network analysis tasks carried out across healthy subjects. Nonetheless, we believe the proposed methods, along with the systematic evaluation of existing techniques, offer an important contribution to the field of brain parcellation, advancing our understanding of how the human cerebral cortex is organised at the macroscale.
Magnetoencephalography An Emerging Neuroimaging Tool For Studying Normal And Abnormal Human Brain Development
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Author : Christos Papadelis
language : en
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Release Date : 2015-10-12
Magnetoencephalography An Emerging Neuroimaging Tool For Studying Normal And Abnormal Human Brain Development written by Christos Papadelis and has been published by Frontiers Media SA this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2015-10-12 with Developmental disabilities categories.
Research on the human brain development has seen an upturn in the past years mostly due to novel neuroimaging tools that became available to study the anatomy and function of the developing brain. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) are beginning to be used more frequently in children to determine the gross anatomy and structural connectivity of their brain. Functional MRI and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) determine the hemodynamics and electroencephalography (EEG) the electrophysiological functions of the developing human brain. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) complements EEG as the only other technique capable of directly measuring the developing brain electrophysiology. Although MEG is still being used relatively rarely in pediatric studies, the recent development in this technology is beginning to demonstrate its utility in both basic and clinical neurosciences. MEG seems to be quite attractive for pediatric use, since it measures the human brain activity in an entirely passive manner without possessing any conceivable risk to the developing tissue. MEG sessions generally require minimal patient preparation, and the recordings are extremely well tolerated from children. Biomagnetic techniques also offer an indirect way to assess the functional brain and heart activity of fetuses in humans in utero by measuring the magnetic field outside the maternal abdomen. Magnetic field produced by the electrical activity in the heart and brain of the fetus is not attenuated by the vernix, a waxy film covering its entire skin. A biomagnetic instrument specifically designed for fetal studies has been developed for this purpose. Fetal MEG studies using such a system have shown that both spontaneous brain activity and evoked cortical activity can be measured from outside the abdomen of pregnant mothers. Fetal MEG may become clinically very useful for implementation and evaluation of intervention programs in at-risk populations. Biomagnetic instruments have also been developed for specifically measuring the brain activity in newborns, infants and older children. MEG studies have shown the usefulness of MEG for localizing active regions in the brain and also for tracking the longitudinal maturation of various sensory systems. Studies of pediatric patients are beginning to show interesting functional pathology in autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other types of neurological and psychiatric disorders (Down syndrome, traumatic brain injury, Tourette syndrome, hearing deficits, childhood migraine). In this eBook, we compile the state of the art MEG and other neuroimaging studies focused on pediatric population in both health and disease. We believe a review of the recent studies of human brain development using MEG is quite timely, since we are witnessing advances not only in the instrumentation optimized for the pediatric population, but also in the research based on various types of MEG systems designed for both human fetuses in utero and neonates and older children.
Discovering The Brain
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Author : National Academy of Sciences
language : en
Publisher: National Academies Press
Release Date : 1992-01-01
Discovering The Brain written by National Academy of Sciences and has been published by National Academies Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1992-01-01 with Medical categories.
The brain ... There is no other part of the human anatomy that is so intriguing. How does it develop and function and why does it sometimes, tragically, degenerate? The answers are complex. In Discovering the Brain, science writer Sandra Ackerman cuts through the complexity to bring this vital topic to the public. The 1990s were declared the "Decade of the Brain" by former President Bush, and the neuroscience community responded with a host of new investigations and conferences. Discovering the Brain is based on the Institute of Medicine conference, Decade of the Brain: Frontiers in Neuroscience and Brain Research. Discovering the Brain is a "field guide" to the brainâ€"an easy-to-read discussion of the brain's physical structure and where functions such as language and music appreciation lie. Ackerman examines: How electrical and chemical signals are conveyed in the brain. The mechanisms by which we see, hear, think, and pay attentionâ€"and how a "gut feeling" actually originates in the brain. Learning and memory retention, including parallels to computer memory and what they might tell us about our own mental capacity. Development of the brain throughout the life span, with a look at the aging brain. Ackerman provides an enlightening chapter on the connection between the brain's physical condition and various mental disorders and notes what progress can realistically be made toward the prevention and treatment of stroke and other ailments. Finally, she explores the potential for major advances during the "Decade of the Brain," with a look at medical imaging techniquesâ€"what various technologies can and cannot tell usâ€"and how the public and private sectors can contribute to continued advances in neuroscience. This highly readable volume will provide the public and policymakersâ€"and many scientists as wellâ€"with a helpful guide to understanding the many discoveries that are sure to be announced throughout the "Decade of the Brain."
Information Sciences 2007 Proceedings Of The 10th Joint Conference
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Author : Paul P Wang
language : en
Publisher: World Scientific
Release Date : 2007-07-18
Information Sciences 2007 Proceedings Of The 10th Joint Conference written by Paul P Wang and has been published by World Scientific this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2007-07-18 with categories.
This proceeding contains the cutting-edge research results in information science and technology, and their related technology. Recent scientific breakthroughs such as invisibility cloak and meta-materials, data mining techniques, advanced game playing in artificial intelligence, nano-technology, unlikely event probability, and fuzzy logic reasoning are just a few outstanding examples. Walter Freeman's 80th birthday celebration is another highlight of this proceedings, because this major event is attended by many leading scientists from around the world. Key speakers include Charles Falco, Water Freeman, Thomas Huang, Meyya Meyyappan, Lotfi Zadeh, Bernette Bouchon Meunier, Heather Carlson, Ling Guan, Etienne Kerre and John Mordes.
Criticality As A Signature Of Healthy Neural Systems Multi Scale Experimental And Computational Studies
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Author : Paolo Massobrio
language : en
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Release Date : 2015-05-08
Criticality As A Signature Of Healthy Neural Systems Multi Scale Experimental And Computational Studies written by Paolo Massobrio and has been published by Frontiers Media SA this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2015-05-08 with Nervous system categories.
Since 2003, when spontaneous activity in cortical slices was first found to follow scale-free statistical distributions in size and duration, increasing experimental evidences and theoretical models have been reported in the literature supporting the emergence of evidence of scale invariance in the cortex. Although strongly debated, such results refer to many different in vitro and in vivo preparations (awake monkeys, anesthetized rats and cats, in vitro slices and dissociated cultures), suggesting that power law distributions and scale free correlations are a very general and robust feature of cortical activity that has been conserved across species as specific substrate for information storage, transmission and processing. Equally important is that the features reminiscent of scale invariance and criticality are observed at scale spanning from the level of interacting arrays of neurons all the way up to correlations across the entire brain. Thus, if we accept that the brain operates near a critical point, little is known about the causes and/or consequences of a loss of criticality and its relation with brain diseases (e.g. epilepsy). The study of how pathogenetical mechanisms are related to the critical/non-critical behavior of neuronal networks would likely provide new insights into the cellular and synaptic determinants of the emergence of critical-like dynamics and structures in neural systems. At the same time, the relation between the impaired behavior and the disruption of criticality would help clarify its role in normal brain function. The main objective of this Research Topic is to investigate the emergence/disruption of the emergent critical-like states in healthy/impaired neural systems.