title: The heavy tail of the human brain.
abstract: Fluctuating oscillations are a ubiquitous feature of neurophysiology. Are the amplitude fluctuations of neural oscillations chance excursions drawn randomly from a normal distribution, or do they tell us more? Recent empirical research suggests that the occurrence of 'anomalous' (high amplitude) oscillations imbues their probability distributions with a heavier tail than the standard normal distribution. However, not all heavy tails are the same. We provide canonical examples of different heavy-tailed distributions in cortical oscillations and discuss the corresponding mechanisms that each suggest, ranging from criticality to multistability, memory, bifurcations, and multiplicative noise. Their existence suggests that the brain is a strongly correlated complex system that employs many different functional mechanisms, and that likewise, we as scientists should refrain from methodological monism.
authors.affiliation: QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, 300 Herston Rd, Herston, QLD 4006, Australia.
authors.forename: James A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Roberts
authors.affiliation: School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia; Black Dog Institute, Hospital Road, Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia; MOVE Research Institute, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Tjeerd W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Boonstra
authors.affiliation: QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, 300 Herston Rd, Herston, QLD 4006, Australia; Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, Herston, QLD 4029, Australia. Electronic address: michael.breakspear@qimrbreghofer.edu.au.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Breakspear
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D016011:Normal Distribution