Authors
James A Roberts, Tjeerd W Boonstra, Michael Breakspear
Publication date
2015/4/1
Source
Current opinion in neurobiology
Volume
31
Pages
164-172
Publisher
Elsevier Current Trends
Description
Highlights
  • Neuronal oscillations exhibit non-Gaussian heavy-tailed probability distributions.
  • The diversity of observed non-Gaussian statistics implies a plurality of mechanisms.
  • Different physiological principles underpin different heavy-tailed distributions.
  • Macroscopic non-Gaussian statistics imply that correlations persist across scales.
  • This argues against any scale being privileged over others.
Fluctuating oscillations are a ubiquitous feature of neurophysiology. Are the amplitude fluctuations of neural oscillations chance excursions drawn randomly from a normal distribution, or do they tell us more? Recent empirical research suggests that the occurrence of ‘anomalous’(high amplitude) oscillations imbues their probability distributions with a heavier tail than the standard normal distribution. However, not all heavy tails are the same. We provide canonical examples of different heavy-tailed distributions in cortical …
Total citations
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Scholar articles
JA Roberts, TW Boonstra, M Breakspear - Current opinion in neurobiology, 2015