{"doi":"10.7554/elife.89337.1","title":"Neural criticality from effective latent variables","abstract":"Abstract Observations of power laws in neural activity data have raised the intriguing notion that brains may operate in a critical state. One example of this critical state is “avalanche criticality,” which has been observed in various systems, including cultured neurons, zebrafish, rodent cortex, and human EEG. More recently, power laws were also observed in neural populations in the mouse under an activity coarse-graining procedure, and they were explained as a consequence of the neural activity being coupled to multiple dynamical latent variables. An intriguing possibility is that avalanche criticality emerges due to a similar mechanism. Here, we determine the conditions under which dynamical latent variables give rise to avalanche criticality. We find that a single, quasi-static latent variable can generate critical avalanches, but multiple latent variables lead to critical behavior in a broader parameter range. We identify two regimes of avalanches, both critical but differing in the amount of information carried about the latent variable. Our results suggest that avalanche criticality arises in neural systems, in which there is an emergent dynamical variable or shared inputs creating an effective latent dynamical variable and when this variable can be inferred from the population activity.","journal":"eLife","year":2023,"id":395063,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9442,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":398030,"name":"Ilya Nemenman","orcid":"0000-0003-3024-4244","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":398029,"name":"Audrey Sederberg","orcid":"0000-0003-4458-3773","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":575793,"name":"Mia C. Morrell","orcid":"0000-0002-1811-1337","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":39,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:19:18.686170Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}