Observation of complex functional cortical patterns in brain cognition

TL;DR

This study models how task-specific functional connectivity patterns emerge in neuronal populations, revealing scale-free, hierarchical structures at critical transition points, and correlates these with empirical brain data.

Contribution

Introduces the neuron activity pattern (NAP) model to simulate emergent cortical patterns and links theoretical findings with empirical electrophysiological data.

Findings

FCPs emerge at near-critical phase transition.

Topological and fractal analysis confirms the transition.

Interaction range influences neuronal connectivity and cognitive behavior.

Abstract

Synaptic plasticity and neuron cross-talk are some of the important key mechanisms underlying formation of dynamic clusters of active neurons. The essence of this study is to model and decipher the mechanism of emergence of a task-specific functional connectivity among a population of neurons. We have used our proposed neuron activity pattern (NAP) model to define an assorted range of interactions and simulated across a 2D lattice with two-state (firing/non-firing) neurons. We observed the emergence of scale-free, hierarchically organized ordered patterns of active neurons, that we call as functional cortical patterns (FCPs), only at the near-critical phase transition. We have done extensive topological characterization of FCPs and tested its congruency with the functional brain networks obtained from the empirical electrophysiological data of a visual stimulus task. Our results of network theory attributes, fractal analysis and functional cartography have confirmed the transitioning effect while generation of FCPs. This gives us strong implication that the functional neuronal system supports far-from-equilibrium dynamics upon receiving a stimulus. Our investigation for the long, critical and short-ranged interactions has lead to an interpretation that near-critical transition phase is a spectrum of critical temperatures (coupling strengths) being affected by the distance between the neurons. The range of interaction among neurons plays an important role in defining the functional severity of the neuronal circuitry. We propose that interaction range as a function of coupling strength drives connectivity in an augmenting fashion as we observed an increase in coupling strength from short to long-range interactions, among the population of neurons. This gives us insight towards the intensity of cognitive behaviour, which is attained by multiple stimulus attempts.