Self-Organized Criticality in C. Elegans Neural Network

The self-organized criticality is a fundamental property for organisms to perform normal functional activities. Extensive large-scale biological neural network researches have found the existence of self-organized criticality through avalanche phenomenon, which is typical characteristic of self-organized criticality. However, such research method is not suitable for small-scale biological neural network, because number of neurons in small-scale biological neural network is not large enough to support the emergence of avalanche phenomenon. It has been demonstrated that branching parameter can also be used to describe the propagation of activity in the neural network. Here, in this paper, the C. elegans neural network composed of 302 neurons is selected to investigate the existence of self-organized criticality using branching parameter. Based on the obtained connectome of C. elegans, a directed graph model is constructed to simulate the gradient potential of neurons and the activity of C. elegans, then, the existence of self-organized criticality in the neural network of C. elegans is proved by using branching parameter method. Meanwhile, the result is further confirmed by analyzing the calcium activity data of C. elegans obtained from biological experiments.