Critical scaling of cortical ensembles without cooperative amplification
- 1Section on Critical Brain Dynamics, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Abstract
Cortical neurons are sparsely and weakly connected, motivating the long-standing idea that they must act collectively, as cell assemblies, to exert substantial influence on surrounding networks. Yet a few spikes in a single pyramidal neuron can recruit thousands of cortical neurons according to a power law with exponent ~0.285, consistent with a two-dimensional system near a critical percolation transition. Here we holographically stimulated ensembles of 1 to 16 layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons in visual cortex of awake mice while imaging hundreds of neighbouring neurons. Across two orders of magnitude in evoked spike count, network responses followed the same scaling law observed for single-neuron perturbations, with no detectable threshold at which co-activation produced additional amplification. Recruitment was sublinear, suppression increased with ensemble size, and ongoing scale-free avalanche dynamics remained stationary. Nevertheless, ensemble identity became increasingly decodable from surrounding activity. Thus, coordinated firing increases representational specificity without escaping the critical dynamics governing propagation: cortical ensembles convey identity without gaining disproportionate causal impact.
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BibTeX
@misc{ribeiro2026critical,
title = {{Critical scaling of cortical ensembles without cooperative amplification}},
author = {T. L. Ribeiro and R. Siddiqui and B. Gifford and S. Pajevic and D. Plenz},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.07.757392},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.07.757392v1},
note = {CC0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Critical scaling of cortical ensembles without cooperative amplification
AU - T. L. Ribeiro
AU - R. Siddiqui
AU - B. Gifford
AU - S. Pajevic
AU - D. Plenz
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/07
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.07.757392
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.07.757392v1
AB - Cortical neurons are sparsely and weakly connected, motivating the long-standing idea that they must act collectively, as cell assemblies, to exert substantial influence on surrounding networks. Yet a few spikes in a single pyramidal neuron can recruit thousands of cortical neurons according to a power law with exponent ~0.285, consistent with a two-dimensional system near a critical percolation transition. Here we holographically stimulated ensembles of 1 to 16 layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons in visual cortex of awake mice while imaging hundreds of neighbouring neurons. Across two orders of magnitude in evoked spike count, network responses followed the same scaling law observed for single-neuron perturbations, with no detectable threshold at which co-activation produced additional amplification. Recruitment was sublinear, suppression increased with ensemble size, and ongoing scale-free avalanche dynamics remained stationary. Nevertheless, ensemble identity became increasingly decodable from surrounding activity. Thus, coordinated firing increases representational specificity without escaping the critical dynamics governing propagation: cortical ensembles convey identity without gaining disproportionate causal impact.
ER -