A little confusion about neural mass model

[刘政]

Hi

    

    This is really a small queation. I keep thinking what does the mass of the neural mass model mean? Is it equal to the mass in physics or it is short for massive, which means a lot of neurons, aka population?

Thank you

Barry

[Paola Di Maio]

Thank you for asking

I am specifically working on terminology and I understand your confusion!

There is a wealth of material that discusses the topic, but authors maange to get away without a precise 'definition, so readers, esp whose first language is not Enliosh, are left to guess

Read here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2020.581040/full

My understanding, based on the reading of lit,  is that Neural Mass Model refers to

a model of the density and other characteristics including dynamic structure/behavior/functionsof a brain region under study

So mass here is intended as the relationship between size.density and other characteristics

 of the area under discussion (mass as a dynamic measure)

Others please correct me

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[Paola Di Maio]

Also

According to my interpretation of the paper

r https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2020.581040/full

these are parameters that determine the Neuronal Mass at any observable state

Based also on the conclusion (the uncertainties in approximation) what is referred to as neuronal mass M, coul also be considered a function F, hence take the concept with a pinch of salt.

[刘政]

Hi

    Thank you so much. And yes, it does confuse me in some way, for in my language, the translation of the mass in the neural mass model equals the words of the mass defined in physics, and I just looked up into the dictionary, the mass can also mean a coherent, typically large body of matter with no definite shape. So I think the first group of people who translated the neural mass model using the physics terminology are wrong.

    So I think maybe mass could have two levels of meaning: 1. a coherent of neurons as a whole, aka the population. 2. Studying a bunch of characteristics of this population.

Thank you

Barry

[WOODMAN Michael]

Hi

A neural mass in computational neuroscience denotes a small amount of neural tissue, idealized as a single point in space.  Usually, the equations for its dynamics are derived or constructed to represent the average activity in that tissue, so denoted by the term mean-field. 

By contrast, a neural field is a spatially extended model, in a sheet or torus, for example, where the equations of the model represent states over time and space.

Also by contrast there are density-based neural mass models which do not construct the mean field, but the full distribution of states and its evolution in time.

TVB implements several mean-field neural mass models and a specific form of neural fields for cortical surfaces, but does not implement fully general neural fields nor density-based neural mass models.

Hope this helps,

Marmaduke

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From: tvb-...@googlegroups.com <tvb-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of 刘政 <lz02...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 3, 2021 5:58:20 AM
To: TVB Users
Subject: Re: [TVB] A little confusion about neural mass model

 

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[Paola Di Maio]

Barry, what you have in mind will make a nice paper

Mamaduke Thanks a lot for the explanation

I am not a neuroscientist but a system modeller, and I am looking at dataset and find them

impossible so I started looking at nomeclature and finding it sometimes plain wrong, sometings confusing and something meaningless without better context

We look at things using whatever our cognitive lens we apply, in the case of your explanations, Marmaduke, you are using multiple lenses which can help us give a sense of perspective on the issue 

I could equally conclude that a neural mass does not exist beyond the observer :-(

it's only a measure of what you are looking at , really, defined by the technique.method/language  that you

use to define what you are looking and seeing

I hope both of you may be interested to collaborate on a paper to refine our undestanding of the things we see and how we call them.

Marmaduke,  do you agree that what we are seeing depends on the state the thing is in and

also the state of the lens/viewer?

That would be my starting point. Maybe I am a  bit of quantum physicist after all

PDM

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[WOODMAN Michael]

Hello,

On 3 May 2021, at 08:53, Paola Di Maio <paola....@gmail.com> wrote:

I could equally conclude that a neural mass does not exist beyond the observer

For the purposes of neuroscience, the neural mass is a methodology, and it exists to the extent that the scientists uses it.  

do you agree that what we are seeing depends on the state the thing is in and

also the state of the lens/viewer?

This was Bohr’s view on biology and one shared by Varela and Maturana; I don’t have anything to add to their writings here. 

Cheers,

Marmaduke

[Paola Di Maio]

Thanks

Let this be reflected in research then :-)

If we could agree on a definition such as   a Neuromass is a dynamic variable as defined by its users

with examples and characterization

That could save everyone having to write and translate a lot of pointless papers to find out 

PDM

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[WOODMAN Michael]

Hi

Papers such as 

https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000092

do a good job of explaining the landscape of models. 

Cheers,

Marmaduke 

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[Paola Di Maio]

Thank you Marmaduke

sure 

but....  corpus has been growing humoungously since 2008. 

Can you query any repo to provide a figure of how many models have been published/become in use since?

Can you guess what is the growthr ate of models?

The figures here only provide estimates in relation to publications in relation to 

high impact journals

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnint.2019.00018/full

I have acquired the dataset from the author trying to grasp how much novelty (say novel models but also simply novel concepts) are there between proceedings in two years (only in one journal in high impact journalist)

well.  Hard to tell because of nomenclature discrepancies and approximations

Looks out of hand to me

Not even realistically computable (not for lack of computer power or know how per se, but because of lack of a coherent supermodel)

working on a possible way forward n, reviewers,contributors welcome #pitch

PDM

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