Unraveling the fluctuations of animal motor activity

TL;DR

This study investigates the scale-free fluctuations in animal motor activity, revealing similarities with human patterns and demonstrating that a simple activation-threshold model can replicate key features of these fluctuations.

Contribution

It shows that rodent spontaneous motion exhibits scale-free fluctuations similar to humans and that a simple activation-threshold model can replicate these features.

Findings

Rodent motion displays scale-free long-term correlations.

The activation-threshold model reproduces key fluctuation features.

Results suggest common underlying mechanisms across species.

Abstract

Human motor activities are known to exhibit scale-free long-term correlated fluctuations over a wide range of timescales, from few to thousands of seconds. The fundamental processes originating such fractal-like behavior are not yet understood. To untangle the most significant features of these fluctuations, in this work the problem is oversimplified by studying a much simpler system: the spontaneous motion of rodents, recorded during several days. The analysis of the animal motion reveals a robust scaling comparable with the results previously reported in humans. It is shown that the most relevant features of the experimental results can be replicated by the statistics of the activation-threshold model proposed in another context by Davidsen and Schuster.