Abstract
The branching process is the minimal model for propagation dynamics, avalanches, and criticality, broadly used in neuroscience. A simple extension of it, adding inhibitory nodes, induces a much-richer phenomenology, including an intermediate phase, between quiescence and saturation, that exhibits the key features of “asynchronous states” in cortical networks. Remarkably, in the inhibition-dominated case, it exhibits an extremely rich phase diagram that captures a wealth of nontrivial features of spontaneous brain activity, such as collective excitability, hysteresis, tilted avalanche shapes, and partial synchronization, allowing us to rationalize striking empirical findings within a common and parsimonious framework.
- Received 30 March 2022
- Revised 6 July 2022
- Accepted 13 October 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.L042027
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society