Connectionists: Quantification of the Function of Criticality: Call for Contributions

[Nergis Tomen]

Dear Colleagues,

We are calling for abstracts for contributions towards a publication on *The
Functional Role of Critical Dynamics* *in Neural Systems*.

The collection will be published by Springer and will be free of charge for
the authors.

The main aim of this collection will be to bring together research and
ideas linking together criticality in the cortex, dynamical and emergent
network states and the putative role such states may serve in the way of
function and computational advantages. The intended format of the book is a
collection of short and concise chapters focusing around this central
theme, in order to allow for many different perspectives to be represented.

If you would like take part in this publication, please send an extended
abstract summarizing your planned contribution, following the guidelines
below, to A. Janssen (*ajanssen**@neuro.uni-bremen.de*
<ajanssen at neuro.uni-bremen.de>) who will be coordinating the communications
by *October* *25th*.

For details of the planned contents and structure of the full
contributions, as well as our expected timeline, please see below. Full
papers will be expected by the end of this year.

Best wishes,

Udo Ernst & Nergis Tomen & Michael Herrmann




*Guidelines for your contribution *

We are aiming for a publication that will give a broad overview of the
state of research linking neuronal avalanches and self-organized
criticality (SOC) to neural function and information processing (for the
related concepts please see e.g. [Bak, Tang and Wiesenfeld, 1987] and
[Beggs and Plenz, 2003]).

Due to the computational advantages of simple systems operating close to a
phase transition (e.g. [Langton, 1990]), there has been a growing interest
in the neuroscience community in the recent years to tackle the question
“Can critical dynamics be useful for the brain?”. And this was the central
theme of the *Excellence Workshop "Dynamical network states, criticality
and cortical function"* that took place on 25-28 March 2017 in
Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, Germany (
*http://www.h-w-k.de/index.php?id=2240*
<http://www.h-w-k.de/index.php?id=2240>). In light of the positive feedback
and interest we received from the community, we are now aiming to bring
together different ideas and approaches related to critical dynamics and
its potential functional role in cortical information processing, and we
are looking forward to your contributions.

We will have a two-stage submission process for the authors. The first
stage is to submit an extended abstract that can be of any format, but
should include a title and contact information of the authors and should
begin with a very brief summary of the main message of the contribution. As
a guideline it is suggested that the length of the extended abstract is 1
to 4 pages and that it contains 1 to 4 figures. Please submit your abstract
to *ajanssen**@neuro.uni-bremen.de* <ajanssen at neuro.uni-bremen.de> by *October
25th*.

Full papers will be requested before the end of this year. The final papers
are expected to include an easy-to-follow introduction, one or more
well-evidenced claims and a substantial discussion section. The full papers
are limited in size to 15-20 pages each (each page about 450 words),
including figures and references.

There will be LaTeX and MS Word templates provided by Springer for the full
contributions. Each contribution will be peer-reviewed by at least 2
colleagues before being published. Each author of a contribution is also
expected to act as a reviewer for 2-3 other contributions. We plan to
include reviewers from outside the field to provide 'critical' input.
Realistically, we estimate that the review process will start in in winter
2017 and end in spring 2018.

We expect the submissions to present original research by the authors.This
can include new results or review of past research by the authors (for
review papers, it is allowed to include research by other persons where
suitable, as long as it does not constitute a major part of the
contribution). We believe it is important for contributions to put forward
a vision or perspective on criticality research.

It is important to make connections to the functionality of the concepts
described in your contribution (e.g. how do the properties observed in your
model/experiments relate to information transfer/processing, behavioural
performance, computation, communication and configuration, etc.).

Where applicable, it is allowed and encouraged to talk about predictions
and theories about how the contents of a contribution may relate to active
computation in the cortex, what practical advantages and biological
mechanisms they may be linked to as well as what direction future research
should take to answer such questions.

We encourage the authors to actively try to draw connections between their
own research, research of other scientists in their field as well as
outside of their field (e.g. discussing ties with experimental results in a
theoretical contribution and vice versa).

Thank you for considering these guidelines.
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