Statistical physics of cognition

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This project asks how the statistical mechanics of critical processes such as avalanches underpin mammalian cognition. This is important because self-organising criticality has been proposed as a general explanation of the architecture and operating point of brain circuitry, however until now it has not been possible to relate it to cognitive function itself. We bring an inter-disciplinary approach to bear upon this problem, simulating neuronal mechanisms at scales from sub-cellular to brain-wide, and employing a new mesoscopic neuroimaging technology to detect avalanches and measure distance to criticality in very large (~10,000) populations of neurons during a cognitive task. This will bring new insight into system-wide brain function during health and disease states.