Speaker
Silvia Scarpetta
(SA)
Description
Recent work has shown that networks of non-linear electronic oscillators can recapitulate diverse aspects of neural dynamics, such as formation of complex synchronization patterns, offering opportunities to draw parallels between emergence in biological and engineered systems. However, two pervasive properties found across brains and in-vitro neuronal cultures have not been extensively addressed in circuit models: criticality, intended as operation at the boundary between ordered and disordered dynamical phases, and metastability, that is, the ability to maintain and switch between states having finite lifetime. Here, we investigated a network of glow lamps, a common type of neon-argon discharge tube, coupled in a two-dimensional square lattice by capacitors. We find that the system can be metastable with respect to the transition between two dynamical phases having different degrees of spatiotemporal order. Close to the spinodal points, which denote the limits of existence of the metastable states, fractal temporal structure emerges and activity avalanches are generated, whose size and duration follow power-law distributions having exponents ≈3/2 and ≈2. Despite differences in system scale, topology, and nature, these critical exponents overlap neural recordings; hence, this setup deserves consideration as building block to realize corresponding physical electronic models. The circuit is also of interest as a physical system wherein critical phenomena are observed close to the spinodal in a first-order phase transition.
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/chaos/26/7/10.1063/1.4954879
Summary
Ludovico Minati, Antonio de Candia and Silvia Scarpetta
Critical phenomena at a first-order phase transition in a lattice of glow lamps: Experimental findings and analogy to neural activity
Chaos 26, 073103 (2016); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4954879
Primary author
Silvia Scarpetta
(SA)
Co-authors
Antonio De Candia
(NA)
Dr
ludovico minati
(1 Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, 38123 Mattarello, Italy 2 Complex Systems Theory Department, Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland)
