2025/07/30 by John J. Briguglio, Briguglio, John J., Jaesung Lee +7
Neuroscience · #FOS: Biological sciences #Memory and Neural Mechanisms #Neural dynamics and brain function #Neurons and Cognition (q-bio.NC) #Neuroscience, Education and Cognitive Function
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.23030
openalex publication_date 2025/07/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Power-law scaling in coarse-grained data suggests critical dynamics, but the true source of this scaling often remains unclear. Here, we analyze neural activity recorded during spatial navigation, reproducing power-law scaling under a phenomenological renormalization group (PRG) procedure that clusters units by activity similarity. Such scaling was previously linked to criticality. Here, we show that the iterative nature of the procedure itself leads to the emergence of power laws when applied to heterogeneous, non-interacting units obeying spatially structured activity without requiring critical interactions. Furthermore, the scaling exponents produced by heteregeneous non-interacting units match the observed exponents in recorded neural data. A simplified version of the PRG further reveals how heterogeneity smooths transitions across scales, mimicking critical behavior. The resulting exponents depend systematically on system and population size, predictions confirmed by subsampling the data.