RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Beyond resting state neuronal avalanches in the somatosensory barrel cortex
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.05.13.444047
DO 10.1101/2021.05.13.444047
A1 B. Mariani
A1 G. Nicoletti
A1 M. Bisio
A1 M. Maschietto
A1 R. Oboe
A1 S. Suweis
A1 S. Vassanelli
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/05/14/2021.05.13.444047.abstract
AB 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 spikes 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 spikes and local field potentials during spontaneous activity, with exponents that are spread along a scaling line. Instead, after the tactile stimulus, activity switches to an across-layers synchronization mode that appears to dominate during cortical representation of the single sensory input.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.