"5398","Self-organising mechanism of neuronal avalanche criticality","A self-organising model is proposed to explain the criticality in cortical networks deduced from recent observations of neuronal avalanches. Prevailing understanding of self-organised criticality (SOC) dictates that conservation of energy is essential to its emergence. Neuronal networks however are inherently non-conservative as demonstrated by microelectrode recordings. The model presented here shows that SOC can arise in non-conservative systems as well, if driven internally. Evidence suggests that synaptic background activity provides the internal drive for non-conservative cortical networks to achieve and maintain a critical state. SOC is robust to any degree $\\eta \\in (0,1]$ of background activity when the network size $N$  is large enough such that $\\eta N\\sim 10^3$. For small networks, a strong background  leads to epileptiform activity, consistent with neurophysiological knowledge about epilepsy.","http://cogprints.org/5398/","Juanico, Dr D.E.","UNSPECIFIED","       <span class=\"person_name\">Juanico, Dr D.E.</span>     (2007)  <a href=\"http://cogprints.org/5398/\"><em>Self-organising mechanism of neuronal avalanche criticality.</em></a>       [Preprint]           ","djuanico","2007-01"