Stability of neuronal avalanches and long-range temporal correlations during the first year of life in human infants

Abstract

During infancy, the human brain rapidly expands in size and complexity as neural networks mature and new information is incorporated at an accelerating pace. Recently, it was shown that single-electrode EEG in preterms at birth exhibits scaleinvariant intermittent bursts. Yet, it is currently not known whether the normal infant brain, in particular, the cortex, maintains a distinct dynamical state during development that is characterized by scale-invariant spatial as well as temporal aspects. Here we employ dense-array EEG recordings acquired from the same infants at 6 and 12 months of age to characterize brain activity during an auditory odd-ball task. We show that suprathreshold events organize as spatiotemporal clusters whose size and duration are power-law distributed, the hallmark of neuronal avalanches. Time series of local suprathreshold EEG events display significant long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs). No differences were found between 6 and 12 months, demonstrating stability of avalanche dynamics and LRTCs during the first year after birth. These findings demonstrate that the infant brain is characterized by distinct spatiotemporal dynamical aspects that are in line with expectations of a critical cortical state. We suggest that critical state dynamics, which theory and experiments have shown to be beneficial for numerous aspects of information processing, are maintained by the infant brain to process an increasingly complex environment during development.

Why Brain Criticality Is Clinically Relevant: A Scoping Review

“…infants at 6 and 12 months of life using high-density EEG to see if scale-free brain activity that was already known to exist at birth (Fransson et al, 2013) continued in the first year of life (Jannesari et al, 2020). At both 6 and 12 months, the EEG organized spatiotemporally according to a power-law with significant LRTC.…”

“…How criticality or near-criticality emerges and evolves in the infant’s brain through adolescence into adulthood is another crucial area of investigation. Jannesari et al (2020) studied term infants at 6 and 12 months of life using high-density EEG to see if scale-free brain activity that was already known to exist at birth ( Fransson et al, 2013 ) continued in the first year of life ( Jannesari et al, 2020 ). At both 6 and 12 months, the EEG organized spatiotemporally according to a power-law with significant LRTC.…”

Dynamics of Long-Range Temporal Correlations in Broadband EEG During Different Motor Execution and Imagery Tasks

“…Neural activity has been reported to produce long-range interactions leading to power-law scaling, suggesting that these neuronal processes are similar across different scales (Kello et al, 2010;Berthouze and Farmer, 2012;Heiney et al, 2021). The power-law scaling is observed in several cases of neuronal recordings such as neuronal firings (Hu et al, 2013), neuronal avalanches (Benayoun et al, 2010;Palva et al, 2013), intracranial recordings such as local field potentials (Benayoun et al, 2010), and electrocorticography (Chaudhary et al, 2017), and non-invasive scalp recordings of EEG and magnetoencephalography (Nikulin and Brismar, 2005;Benayoun et al, 2010;Kwok et al, 2019;Jannesari et al, 2020) in both oscillatory and non-oscillatory processes. In the surface-level brain activity such as EEG and magnetoencephalography, the power-law scaling is observed in the form of the 1/f power spectrum of non-oscillatory or arrhythmic scale-free neuronal activity.…”

Retraction Note to: Stability of neuronal avalanches and long-range temporal correlations during the first year of life in human infant

“…The authors have retracted this article, Jannesari et al (2019), because an incorrect (i.e., nonfinal) version of the article was published in error. The manuscript has been republished as Jannesari et al (2020). All authors agree to this retraction.…”