Spontaneous brain activity as a source of ideal 1/f noise

Paolo Allegrini, Danilo Menicucci, Remo Bedini, Leone Fronzoni, Angelo Gemignani, Paolo Grigolini, B. J. West, Paolo Paradisi

87.19.le EEG and MEG  87.85.dm Physical models of neurophysiological processes  89.75.Da Systems obeying scaling laws 

We study the electroencephalogram (EEG) of 30 closed-eye awake subjects with a technique of analysis recently proposed to detect punctual events signaling rapid transitions between different metastable states. After single-EEG-channel event detection, we study global properties of events simultaneously occurring among two or more electrodes termed coincidences. We convert the coincidences into a diffusion process with three distinct rules that can yield the same \mu only in the case where the coincidences are driven by a renewal process. We establish that the time interval between two consecutive renewal events driving the coincidences has a waiting-time distribution with inverse power-law index \mu about 2 corresponding to ideal 1 / f noise. We argue that this discovery, shared by all subjects of our study, supports the conviction that 1 / f noise is an optimal communication channel for complex networks as in art or language and may therefore be the channel through which the brain influences complex processes and is influenced by them.

Source: Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear and soft matter physics (Online) 80 (2009): 061914-1–061914-13. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.80.061914

Publisher: Published by the American Physical Society through the American Institute of Physics,, Melville, N.Y. , Stati Uniti d'America

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