# Disentangling the critical signatures of neural activity

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.05070 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05070/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 11 May 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [The Universe Learning Itself: On the Evolution of Dynamics from the Big Bang to Machine Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16515/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The critical brain hypothesis has emerged as an attractive framework to understand neuronal activity, but it is still widely debated. In this work, we analyze data from a multi-electrodes array in the rat's cortex and we find that power-law neuronal avalanches satisfying the crackling-noise relation coexist with spatial correlations that display typical features of critical systems. In order to shed a light on the underlying mechanisms at the origin of these signatures of criticality, we introduce a paradigmatic framework with a common stochastic modulation and pairwise linear interactions inferred from our data. We show that in such models power-law avalanches that satisfy the crackling noise relation emerge as a consequence of the extrinsic modulation, whereas scale-free correlations are solely determined by internal interactions. Moreover, this disentangling is fully captured by the mutual information in the system. Finally, we show that analogous power-law avalanches are found in more realistic models of neural activity as well, suggesting that extrinsic modulation might be a broad mechanism for their generation.