Signatures of brain criticality unveiled by maximum entropy analysis across cortical states

Abstract

It has recently been reported that statistical signatures of brain criticality, obtained from distributions of neuronal avalanches, can depend on the cortical state. We revisit these claims with a completely different and independent approach, employing a maximum entropy model to test whether signatures of criticality appear in urethane-anesthetized rats. To account for the spontaneous variation of cortical states, we parse the time series and perform the maximum entropy analysis as a function of the variability of the population spiking activity. To compare data sets with different numbers of neurons, we define a normalized distance to criticality that takes into account the peak and width of the specific heat curve. We found a universal collapse of the normalized distance to criticality dependence on the cortical state, on an animal by animal basis. This indicates a universal dynamics and a critical point at an intermediate value of spiking variability.