Suchergebnisse

Previous studies suggest that the brain operates at a critical point in which phases of order and disorder coexist, producing emergent patterned dynamics at all scales and optimizing several brain functions. Here, we combined light-sheet microscopy with GCaMP zebrafish larvae to study whole-brain dynamics in vivo at near single-cell resolution. We show that spontaneous activity propagates in the brain's three-dimensional space, generating scaleinvariant neuronal avalanches with time courses and recurrence times that exhibit statistical self-similarity at different magnitude, temporal, and frequency scales. This suggests that the nervous system operates close to a non-equilibrium phase transition, where a large repertoire of spatial, temporal, and interactive modes can be supported. Finally, we show that gap junctions contribute to the maintenance of criticality and that, during interactions with the environment (sensory inputs and self-generated behaviors), the system is transiently displaced to a more ordered regime, conceivably to limit the potential sensory representations and motor outcomes. ; A.P.-A. was supported by a Juan de la Cierva fellowship (IJCI-2014-21066) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. A.J. was supported by the Fondation pour la Recherche Medicale (FRM:FDT20140930915) and the ENS Cachan. M.P. was supported by the ENS Lyon. G.D. was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant DYSTRUCTURE (No. 295129), by the Spanish Research Project PSI2016-75688-P (AEI/FEDER), and by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 720270 (HBP SGA1). G.S. was supported by ERC StG 243106, ERC CoG 726280, ANR-10-LABX-54 MEMO LIFE, and ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02 PSL Research University. We thank J. Boulanger-Weill for technical assistance and discussions, Patricia Gongal for editorial assistance, and David Hildebrand for providing GCaMP6f line.