Successes and failures of simple statistical physics models for a network of real neurons

Leenoy Meshulam; Jeffrey L. Gauthier; Carlos D. Brody; David W. Tank; William Bialek

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arXiv · 2112.14735

Successes and failures of simple statistical physics models for a network of real neurons

Leenoy Meshulam·Jeffrey L. Gauthier·Carlos D. Brody·David W. Tank·William Bialek

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Abstract

Biological networks exhibit complex, coordinated patterns of activity. Can these patterns be captured precisely in simple models? Here we use measurements of simultaneous activity in 1000+ neurons in the mouse brain to test the validity of models grounded in statistical physics. When cells are dense samples from a small region, we find extremely detailed quantitative agreement between theory and experiment; sparse samples from larger regions lead to model failures. These results show we can aspire to more than qualitative agreement between simplifying theoretical ideas and the detailed behavior of a complex biological system.

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Leenoy Meshulam, Jeffrey L. Gauthier, Carlos D. Brody, David W. Tank, William Bialek. 2021-12-29. Successes and failures of simple statistical physics models for a network of real neurons. https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.14735

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