Liquid Journal of Complex Systems

Article #5, version 13 March 2012, state: Liquid turbulent

A Success Story in the Science of Complex Systems: Global Approach to Brain Activity, from Cognition to Disease

Authors: Jordi García-Ojalvo et al.

Abstract

This success story describes the phenomenon of neuronal synchronization at a wide range of spatial scales as a major orchestrator of brain integration processes. The main results concern:

computing functional connectivity between brain activities, characterizing connectivity patterns extracted from MEG data;

a novel analytic methodology to measure abnormal synchronization allowing to understand how normal aging and pathological senescence differentially affect neural coupling strength;

characterizing the topology of interconnected modular organizations in the brain, based on experiments both with in-vitro networks of cultured neurons and with computer-simulated neuronal networks, allowing to understand the associated structure-to-function organization;

describing connectivity dynamics in such networks, namely the influence of different types of structural connectivity (long-range cortico-cortical connectivity, long-range thalamocortical connectivity, and short-range connectivity) on the neural phase synchronization in selected brain areas; and finally

explaining the process of shape identification in the brain visual system. These results are very relevant in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and the anticipation of epileptic seizures.

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Received: 9 March 2012 | Updated: 13 March 2012 | Liquid turbulent since: 9 March 2012

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