Universal and nonuniversal neural dynamics on small world connectomes: A finite-size scaling analysis

Abstract

Evidence of critical dynamics has been found recently in both experiments and models of large-scale brain dynamics. The understanding of the nature and features of such a critical regime is hampered by the relatively small size of the available connectome, which prevents, among other things, the determination of its associated universality class. To circumvent that, here we study a neural model defined on a class of small-world networks that share some topological features with the human connectome. We find that varying the topological parameters can give rise to a scale-invariant behavior either belonging to the mean-field percolation universality class or having nonuniversal critical exponents. In addition, we find certain regions of the topological parameter space where the system presents a discontinuous, i.e., noncritical, dynamical phase transition into a percolated state. Overall, these results shed light on the interplay of dynamical and topological roots of the complex brain dynamics.