Understanding the complex dynamics of excitation and inhibition within the cortex offers crucial insights into neural ensemble behavior across multiple states, from wakefulness to sleep. By leveraging tools from dynamical systems and analogies from statistical physics, this body of work explores the spatiotemporal balance between excitation and inhibition, highlighting how these dynamics contribute to both local and global cortical activity patterns. The observed symmetry breaking at critical moments, reminiscent of phase transitions in physical systems, underscores the sensitivity of cortical networks to small perturbations, which can cascade into larger-scale oscillations and state changes.
High-frequency oscillations, including beta and gamma rhythms, emerge from this intricate interplay and propagate systematically across the cortex. These oscillations are especially prominent during slow-wave sleep, where they likely play a role in cognitive functions such as memory consolidation. By integrating ensemble analyses across different behavioral states—wakefulness, sleep, and transitions—this research illuminates how excitation and inhibition orchestrate the neocortex’s ability to dynamically balance stability and flexibility, driving fundamental processes such as oscillatory rhythms and coordinated network activity.
This work not only advances our understanding of the neural processes underlying normal cortical function but also offers insights into pathological conditions, such as seizures, where this balance is disrupted. These findings bridge the gap between neural biophysics and large-scale functional dynamics, offering a fresh perspective on how cortical states self-organize through emergent, multiscale processes.