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

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.