Recent advances in experimental techniques have allowed the simultaneous recordings of
populations of hundreds of neurons, fostering a debate about the nature of the collective
structure of population neural activity. Much of this debate has focused on the
empirical findings of a phase transition in the parameter space of maximum entropy
models describing the measured neural probability distributions, interpreting this phase
transition to indicate a critical tuning of the neural code. Here, we instead focus on the
possibility that this is a first-order phase transition which provides evidence that the
real neural population is in a `structured', collective state. We show that this collective
state is robust to changes in stimulus ensemble and adaptive state. We find that the
pattern of pairwise correlations between neurons has a strength that is well within the
strongly correlated regime and does not require fine tuning, suggesting that this state is
generic for populations of 100+ neurons. We find a clear correspondence between the
emergence of a phase transition, and the emergence of attractor-like structure in the
inferred energy landscape. A collective state in the neural population, in which neural
activity patterns naturally form clusters, provides a consistent interpretation for our
results.
Khanna, Jaya; Medvigy, David; Fueglistaler, Stephan; Walko, Robert
Abstract:
More than 20% Amazon rainforest has been cleared in the past three decades triggering important hydroclimatic changes. Small-scale (~few kilometers) deforestation in the 1980s has caused thermally-triggered atmospheric circulations that increase regional cloudiness and precipitation frequency. However, these circulations are predicted to diminish as deforestation increases. Here we use multi-decadal satellite records and numerical model simulations to show a regime shift in the regional hydroclimate accompanying increasing deforestation in Rondônia, Brazil. Compared to the 1980s, present-day deforested areas in downwind western Rondônia are found to be wetter than upwind eastern deforested areas during the local dry season. The resultant precipitation change in the two regions is approximately ±25% of the deforested area mean. Meso-resolution simulations robustly reproduce this transition when forced with increasing deforestation alone, showing a negligible role of large-scale climate variability. Furthermore, deforestation-induced surface roughness reduction is found to play an essential role in the present-day dry season hydroclimate. Our study illustrates the strong scale-sensitivity of the climatic response to Amazonian deforestation and suggests that deforestation is sufficiently advanced to have caused a shift from a thermally- to a dynamically-driven hydroclimatic regime.
Maingi, R.; Hu, J. S.; Sun, Z.; Tritz, K.; Zuo, G. Z.; Xu, W.; Huang, M.; Meng, X. C.; Canik, J. M.; Diallo, A.; Lunsford, R.; Mansfield, D. K.; Osborne, T. H.; Gong, X. Z.; Wang, Y. F.; Li, Y. Y.