Brain Dynamics across levels of Organization..pdfVIP

Brain Dynamics across levels of Organization. Gerhard Werner, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering University of Texas, Austin, Engineering Science Building 1 University Station, C0800 Austin, TX, 78712-0238, USA. Abstract After presenting evidence that the electrical activity recorded from the brain surface can reflect metastable state transitions of neuronal configurations at the mesoscopic level, I will suggest that their patterns may correspond to the distinctive spatio-temporal activity in the Dynamic Core (DC) and the Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW), respectively, in the models of the Edelman group on the one hand, and of Dehaene-Changeux, on the other. In both cases, the recursively reentrant activity flow in intra- cortical and cortical-subcortical neuron loops plays an essential and distinct role. Reasons will be given for viewing the temporal characteristics of this activity flow as signature of Self-Organized Criticality (SOC), notably in reference to the dynamics of neuronal avalanches. This point of view enables the use of statistical Physics approaches for exploring phase transitions, scaling and universality properties of DC and GNW, with relevance to the macroscopic electrical activity in EEG and EMG. Keywords: Metastability, Self-Organized Criticality, phase Transitions, Dynamic Core Hypothesis, Global Workspace, Non-Linear Dynamics, Operational Architectonics, Microstates. 1. Introduction Neuroscience is being practiced in many different forms and at many different organizational levels. Which of these levels and associated conceptual frameworks is most informa