@misc{10481/61843,
year = {2019},
month = {10},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10481/61843},
abstract = {Cortical networks are shaped by the combined action of excitatory and inhibitory interactions. Among
other important functions, inhibition solves the problem of the all-or-none type of response that comes
about in purely excitatory networks, allowing the network to operate in regimes of moderate or low
activity, between quiescent and saturated regimes. Here, we elucidate a noise-induced effect that we
call “Jensen’s force” –stemming from the combined effect of excitation/inhibition balance and network
sparsity– which is responsible for generating a phase of self-sustained low activity in excitationinhibition
networks. The uncovered phase reproduces the main empirically-observed features of cortical
networks in the so-called asynchronous state, characterized by low, un-correlated and highly-irregular
activity. The parsimonious model analyzed here allows us to resolve a number of long-standing issues,
such as proving that activity can be self-sustained even in the complete absence of external stimuli or
driving. The simplicity of our approach allows for a deep understanding of asynchronous states and of
the phase transitions to other standard phases it exhibits, opening the door to reconcile, asynchronousstate
and critical-state hypotheses, putting them within a unified framework. We argue that Jensen’s
forces are measurable experimentally and might be relevant in contexts beyond neuroscience.},
organization = {The study is supported by Fondazione Cariparma, under TeachInParma Project. MAM thanks the Spanish
Ministry of Science and the Agencia Española de Investigación (AEI) for financial support under grant
FIS2017-84256-P (European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)) as well as the Consejera de Conocimiento,
Investigación y Universidad, Junta de Andaluca and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), ref.
SOMM17/6105/UGR. V.B. and R.B. acknowledge funding from the INFN BIOPHYS project},
publisher = {Springer Nature},
title = {Jensen’s force and the statistical mechanics of cortical asynchronous states},
doi = {10.1038/s41598-019-51520-2},
author = {Buendía, Víctor and Villegas, Pablo and Di Santo, Serena and Vezzani, Alessandro and Burioni, Raffaella and Muñoz Martínez, Miguel Ángel},
}