学术文献库

Readiness potential is a widely observed brain activity in several species including crayfish before the spontaneous behavioral initiation. However, it is poorly understood how this spontaneous activity is generated. The hypothesis that some specific, dedicated site is responsible for the spontaneity has been questioned. Here, by using intracellular recording and staining of the brain neurons in crayfish and modeling using the sandpile, which is the original model of self-organized criticality (SOC), we show that readiness potential can emerge everywhere in the brain because it is a SOC system. Despite the diversity in neurons and their morphology, brain neurons showed signatures of criticality and readiness potential. We find that the previously known readiness potential in a neuron is a consequence of the critical behavior of the entire network. Indeed, seemingly unrelated membrane potential activity in neurons in different animals can shape readiness potential when its time series are averaged after their alignment with respect to the spontaneous behavioral initiation. We show that the sandpile model not made for the potential, can form the premovement buildup activity similar to readiness potential. Scaling properties of the synaptic avalanches are in line with those of vertebrate species; thus, not only is the critical brain hypothesis supported in crayfish, but our findings might also provide a unified view of the basis of spontaneity in animal behavior.