2014/09/09 by David B. Kastner, Stephen A. Baccus, Tatyana O. Sharpee
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Mathematics · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Artificial intelligence #Biological system #Biology #Computer science #Critical point (mathematics) #ENCODE #Mathematics #Neural coding #Neural dynamics and brain function #Neurobiology and Insect Physiology Research #Neuroscience #Pattern recognition (psychology) #Photoreceptor and optogenetics research #Physics #Population #Psychology #Retina #Statistical physics #Stimulus (psychology) #q-bio.NC
paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.1418092112
arxiv created 2014/09/09 · openalex publication_date 2015/02/09 · arxiv updated 2015/06/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Computation in the brain involves multiple types of neurons, yet the organizing principles for how these neurons work together remain unclear. Information theory has offered explanations for how different types of neurons can maximize the transmitted information by encoding different stimulus features. However, recent experiments indicate that separate neuronal types exist that encode the same filtered version of the stimulus, but then the different cell types signal the presence of that stimulus feature with different thresholds. Here we show that the emergence of these neuronal types can be quantitatively described by the theory of transitions between different phases of matter. The two key parameters that control the separation of neurons into subclasses are the mean and standard deviation (SD) of noise affecting neural responses. The average noise across the neural population plays the role of temperature in the classic theory of phase transitions, whereas the SD is equivalent to pressure or magnetic field, in the case of liquid-gas and magnetic transitions, respectively. Our results account for properties of two recently discovered types of salamander Off retinal ganglion cells, as well as the absence of multiple types of On cells. We further show that, across visual stimulus contrasts, retinal circuits continued to operate near the critical point whose quantitative characteristics matched those expected near a liquid-gas critical point and described by the nearest-neighbor Ising model in three dimensions. By operating near a critical point, neural circuits can maximize information transmission in a given environment while retaining the ability to quickly adapt to a new environment.