The phenomenological renormalization group in neuronal models near criticality

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nascimento, Kaio F. R., Castro, Daniel M., Cambrainha, Gustavo G., Copelli, Mauro
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Nascimento, Kaio F. R.
Castro, Daniel M.
Cambrainha, Gustavo G.
Copelli, Mauro
author_facet Nascimento, Kaio F. R.
Castro, Daniel M.
Cambrainha, Gustavo G.
Copelli, Mauro
contents The phenomenological renormalization group (PRG) has been applied to the study of scaleinvariant phenomena in neuronal data, providing evidence for critical phenomena in the brain. However, it remains unclear how reliably these observed signatures indicate genuine critical behavior, as it is not well established how close to criticality a system must be for them to emerge. Here, we rely on neuronal models with known critical points to investigate under which conditions the PRG procedure yields consistent results. We discuss how the time-binning step of data preprocessing can crucially affect the final results, and propose a data-driven method to adapt the time bin in order to circumvent this issue. Under these conditions, the PRG method only detects scaling behavior in neuronal models within a very narrow range of the critical point, lending credence to the conclusions drawn from PRG results in experimental data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_14053
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The phenomenological renormalization group in neuronal models near criticality
Nascimento, Kaio F. R.
Castro, Daniel M.
Cambrainha, Gustavo G.
Copelli, Mauro
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Statistical Mechanics
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
The phenomenological renormalization group (PRG) has been applied to the study of scaleinvariant phenomena in neuronal data, providing evidence for critical phenomena in the brain. However, it remains unclear how reliably these observed signatures indicate genuine critical behavior, as it is not well established how close to criticality a system must be for them to emerge. Here, we rely on neuronal models with known critical points to investigate under which conditions the PRG procedure yields consistent results. We discuss how the time-binning step of data preprocessing can crucially affect the final results, and propose a data-driven method to adapt the time bin in order to circumvent this issue. Under these conditions, the PRG method only detects scaling behavior in neuronal models within a very narrow range of the critical point, lending credence to the conclusions drawn from PRG results in experimental data.
title The phenomenological renormalization group in neuronal models near criticality
topic Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Statistical Mechanics
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14053