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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Excitatory-inhibitory branching process: A parsimonious view of cortical asynchronous states, excitability, and criticality

Roberto Corral López1, Víctor Buendía2,3, and Miguel A. Muñoz1

  • 1Departamento de Electromagnetismo y Física de la Materia and Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional, Universidad de Granada, E-18071 Granada, Spain
  • 2Department of Computer Science, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany,
  • 3Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 72076 Tübingen, Germany

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Phys. Rev. Research 4, L042027 – Published 14 November, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.L042027

Abstract

The branching process is the minimal model for propagation dynamics, avalanches, and criticality, broadly used in neuroscience. A simple extension of it, adding inhibitory nodes, induces a much-richer phenomenology, including an intermediate phase, between quiescence and saturation, that exhibits the key features of “asynchronous states” in cortical networks. Remarkably, in the inhibition-dominated case, it exhibits an extremely rich phase diagram that captures a wealth of nontrivial features of spontaneous brain activity, such as collective excitability, hysteresis, tilted avalanche shapes, and partial synchronization, allowing us to rationalize striking empirical findings within a common and parsimonious framework.

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Phys. Rev. Research 4, L042027– Published 14 November, 2022
  • Received 30 March 2022
  • Revised 6 July 2022
  • Accepted 13 October 2022
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