PUBLICATION
The geometry and dimensionality of brain-wide activity
- Authors
- Wang, Z., Mai, W., Chai, Y., Qi, K., Ren, H., Shen, C., Zhang, S., Tan, G., Hu, Y., Wen, Q.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-250625-5
- Date
- 2025
- Source
- eLIFE 14: (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Wen, Quan
- Keywords
- Euclidean random matrix, dimension reduction, functional space, mouse, neural covariance spectrum, neuroscience, physics of living systems, scale invariance, whole-brain imaging, zebrafish
- MeSH Terms
-
- Neurons*/physiology
- Animals
- Brain*/anatomy & histology
- Brain*/physiology
- Calcium/metabolism
- Behavior, Animal
- Larva/physiology
- Zebrafish/physiology
- Mice
- PubMed
- 40549559 Full text @ Elife
Citation
Wang, Z., Mai, W., Chai, Y., Qi, K., Ren, H., Shen, C., Zhang, S., Tan, G., Hu, Y., Wen, Q. (2025) The geometry and dimensionality of brain-wide activity. eLIFE. 14:.
Abstract
Understanding neural activity organization is vital for deciphering brain function. By recording whole-brain calcium activity in larval zebrafish during hunting and spontaneous behaviors, we find that the shape of the neural activity space, described by the neural covariance spectrum, is scale-invariant: a smaller, randomly sampled cell assembly resembles the entire brain. This phenomenon can be explained by Euclidean Random Matrix theory, where neurons are reorganized from anatomical to functional positions based on their correlations. Three factors contribute to the observed scale invariance: slow neural correlation decay, higher functional space dimension, and neural activity heterogeneity. In addition to matching data from zebrafish and mice, our theory and analysis demonstrate how the geometry of neural activity space evolves with population sizes and sampling methods, thus revealing an organizing principle of brain-wide activity.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping