Neuronal Avalanches in the Human Brain

An important characteristic of critical systems is scale-free dynamicssuggesting that evidence for critical dynamics in the brain should be observed at all scales. Neuronal avalanches have been previously identified at relatively small scales in in vitro and in vivo animal studies. Here we focus on neuronal avalanches in large-scale activity of the human brain recorded using MEG. We illustrate the main steps in the analysis and several controls. The findings imply that the healthy human cortex is indeed characterized by critical branching dynamics.