Ising-like dynamics in large-scale brain functional networks

DANIEL FRAIMAN; PABLO BALENZUELA; JENNIFER FOSS; DANTE R. CHIALVO

PHYSICAL REVIEW E

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Año: 2009 vol. 79 p. 61922 - 61931

1539-3755

Brain “rest” is defined -more or less unsuccessfully- as the state in which there is no explicit brain input or output. This work focuss onthequestionof whether such state can be comparable to any known dynamical state. For that purpose, correlation networks from human brain Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) are constrasted with correlation networks extracted from nu merical simulations of the Ising model in 2D, at different temperatures. For the critical temperature Tc, striking similarities appear in the most relevant statistical properties, making the two networks indistinguishable from each other. These results are interpreted here as lending support to the conjecture that the dynamics of the functioning brain is near a critical point.