Dynamics colleagues, what are some of the best examples of something like a "bifurcation" (dynamical systems speak) that we see in experimental brain data?
Anything comes to mind?
#neuroscience
#complexity
@DrYohanJohn
@NicoleCRust
@SussilloDavid
@neuralengine
@sganguli
Very interesting question! I'm a conservative stick-in-the-mud. And also, I'm ignorant (there may be lots of stuff I'm not aware of).
My own view is that there are no really good examples in experimental brain data yet. To properly define a bifurcation, we need to know the state that determines the dynamics -- and we don't yet. E.g., we don't know, for sure, that dynamics recorded in any region are endogenously generated, as opposed to reflecting external signals.
It's an actively researched question (e.g., https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.19.452951v2 and recent work from Lea Duncker, Dan O'Connor, Maneesh Sahani, and Krishna Shenoy, I don't think it's out yet.)
Those of us busy inferring latent dynamics from epjhys data hope to see fun bifurcations in what we infer -- but inferred is a long way from hard proof.
Decision-making models have examples (e.g., https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1104171?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed and http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3733-05.2006) but that's models not data.
@PessoaBrain @NicoleCRust @carlosbrody If you include the single cell level, then John Rinzel uncovered many examples (not just in models but also evidence for them occurring in real data), see e.g. the following beautifully named paper:
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009752
@PessoaBrain @NicoleCRust @carlosbrody amusingly myself, Nicole and Carlos all had desks within 1 metre of each other at NYU ~20 years ago. (Nicole took over from Carlos as my officemate, John had the office next door).
@neuralengine @PessoaBrain @carlosbrody Thanks for the smile. I have many fond memories of those days. I won't remind you of how long ago that was (trust me, don't calculate ...).
@carlosbrody @PessoaBrain @NicoleCRust @neuralengine I know exactly how long ago it was :).
@NicoleCRust @PessoaBrain @carlosbrody @jerlich an Aeon