There is extensive evidence that brain criticality – the balance between neural excitation and inhibition – enhances its information processing capabilities.
But despite the significance of brain criticality and its potential influence on neurological and psychiatric disorders, the genetic basis of this state had been “largely unexplored”, according to researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ biophysics and automation institutes. “We demonstrate that genetic factors significantly influence brain criticality across various scales, from specific brain regions to large-scale networks,” the team said in their paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month.
They also established a link between criticality and cognitive functions, suggesting a shared genetic foundation.
“These findings position brain criticality as a biological phenotype, opening broad avenues for exploring its implications in brain function and potential dysfunctions,” the team wrote.
Brain criticality is characterised by neuronal avalanches, or cascading bursts of neuron activity in brain networks.
“At the critical state, the brain exhibits scale-free dynamics, with avalanches observed across various scales ranging from local networks of individual neurons to the global network of interacting brain areas,” the paper said.
