Self-organised Criticality in a Model of the Rat Somatosensory Cortex

Large Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) neural networks were examined and the structures discussed in this article simulated a part of the rat somatosensory cortex. We used a modular architecture of the network divided into layers and sub-regions. Because of a high degree of complexity effective parallelisation of algorithms was required. The results of parallel simulations were presented. An occurrence of the self-organised criticality (SOC) was demonstrated. Most notably, in large biological neural networks consisting of artificial HH neurons, the SOC was shown to manifest itself in the frequency of its appearance as a function of the size of spike potential avalanches generated within such nets. These two parameters followed the power law characteristic of other systems exhibiting the SOC behaviour.