Critical brain wave dynamics of neuronal avalanches

Abstract

Analytical expressions for scaling of brain wave spectra derived from the general non-linear wave Hamiltonian form show excellent agreement with experimental “neuronal avalanche” data. The theory of the weakly evanescent non-linear brain wave dynamics reveals the underlying collective processes hidden behind the phenomenological statistical description of the neuronal avalanches and connects together the whole range of brain activity states, from oscillatory wave-like modes, to neuronal avalanches, to incoherent spiking, showing that the neuronal avalanches are just the manifestation of the different non-linear side of wave processes abundant in cortical tissue. In a more broad way these results show that a system of wave modes interacting through all possible combinations of the third order non-linear terms described by a general wave Hamiltonian necessarily produces anharmonic wave modes with temporal and spatial scaling properties that follow scale free power laws. To the best of our knowledge this has never been reported in the physical literature and may be applicable to many physical systems that involve wave processes and not just to neuronal avalanches.