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Neuronal Avalanches Across the Rat Somatosensory Barrel Cortex and the Effect of Single Whisker Stimulation.
- Source :
- Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience; 8/30/2021, Vol. 15, p1-13, 13p
- Publication Year :
- 2021
-
Abstract
- Since its first experimental signatures, the so called "critical brain hypothesis" has been extensively studied. Yet, its actual foundations remain elusive. According to a widely accepted teleological reasoning, the brain would be poised to a critical state to optimize the mapping of the noisy and ever changing real-world inputs, thus suggesting that primary sensory cortical areas should be critical. We investigated whether a single barrel column of the somatosensory cortex of the anesthetized rat displays a critical behavior. Neuronal avalanches were recorded across all cortical layers in terms of both multi-unit activities and population local field potentials, and their behavior during spontaneous activity compared to the one evoked by a controlled single whisker deflection. By applying a maximum likelihood statistical method based on timeseries undersampling to fit the avalanches distributions, we show that neuronal avalanches are power law distributed for both multi-unit activities and local field potentials during spontaneous activity, with exponents that are spread along a scaling line. Instead, after the tactile stimulus, activity switches to a transient across-layers synchronization mode that appears to dominate the cortical representation of the single sensory input. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- WHISKERS
SOMATOSENSORY cortex
LABORATORY rats
MAXIMUM likelihood statistics
RATS
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 16625137
- Volume :
- 15
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 152188368
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2021.709677