Date of Graduation
5-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science
Degree Level
Undergraduate
Department
Physics
Advisor/Mentor
Shew, Woodrow
Committee Member/Reader
Oliver, William
Committee Member/Second Reader
Leong, Josiah
Committee Member/Third Reader
Clay, Matt
Abstract
In organisms, an interesting phenomenon occurs in both behavior and neuronal activity: organization with fractal, scale-free fluctuations over multiple spatiotemporal orders of magnitude (1,2). In regard to behavior, this sort of complex structure-- which manifests itself from small scale fidgeting to purposeful, full body movements-- may support goals such as foraging (3-6), visual search (4), and decision making (7,8). Likewise, the presence of this sort of structure in the cerebral cortex in the form of spatiotemporal cascades, coined “neuronal avalanches,” may offer optimal information transfer (9). Thus, when considering the functional relationship between the cerebral cortex and movements of the body, these observations, taken in tandem, pose the question: are these two independent observations of scale-free structure related or merely coincidental?
Keywords
scale-free, neuroscience, criticality, networks, neurons
Citation
Jones, S. (2022). Scale-free behavioral dynamics directly linked with scale-free cortical dynamics. Physics Undergraduate Honors Theses Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/physuht/7