Striatal processing of cortical neuronal avalanches – A computational investigation

Abstract

In the cortex, spontaneous neuronal avalanches can be characterized by spatiotemporal activity clusters with a cluster size distribution that follows a power law with exponent–1.5. Recordings in the striatum revealed that striatal activity was also characterized by spatiotemporal clusters that followed a power law distribution albeit, with significantly steeper slope, i.e., they lacked the large spatial clusters that are commonly expected for avalanche dynamics. In this study, we used computational modeling to investigate the influence of intrastriatal inhibition and corticostriatal interplay as important factors to understand the experimental findings and overall information transmission among these circuits.