What Is Stochastic Resonance? Definitions, Misconceptions, Debates, and Its Relevance to Biology

By Mark D. McDonnell, Derek Abbott. PLoS Comput. Biol., 2009

780 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Stochastic resonance is said to be observed when increases in levels of unpredictable fluctuations—e.g., random noise—cause an increase in a metric of the quality of signal transmission or detection performance, rather than a decrease. This counterintuitive effect relies on system nonlinearities and on some parameter ranges being “suboptimal”. Stochastic resonance has been observed, quantified, and described in a plethora of physical and biological systems, including neurons. Being a topic of widespread multidisciplinary interest, the definition of stochastic resonance has evolved significantly over the last decade or so, leading to a number of debates, misunderstandings, and controversies. Perhaps the most important debate is whether the brain has evolved to utilize random noise in vivo, as part of the “neural code”. Surprisingly, this debate has been for the most part ignored by neuroscientists, despite much indirect evidence of a positive role for noise in the brain. We explore some of the reasons for this and argue why it would be more surprising if the brain did not exploit randomness provided by noise—via stochastic resonance or otherwise—than if it did. We also challenge neuroscientists and biologists, both computational and experimental, to embrace a very broad definition of stochastic resonance in terms of signal-processing “noise benefits”, and to devise experiments aimed at verifying that random variability can play a functional role in the brain, nervous system, or other areas of biology.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Molecular Biology, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bfd7a30187c66038968dd88381953047d4d8e020

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Citations in the corpus

Age-Related Changes in 1/f Neural Electrophysiological Noise (2015, background): “Although we focus on the potential detriments of 1/f noise, in certain cases noise plays an important role in the CNS and may actually improve signal detection in some situations with weak stimuli via stochastic resonance (Li et al., 2006b; McDonnell and Abbott, 2009).”
A technical guide to tDCS, and related non-invasive brain stimulation tools (2015, background): “Stochastic resonance refers to the phenomenon that a signal that is too weak to exceed a threshold is amplified by adding noise (McDonnell and Abbott, 2009).”
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation Enhances Individual Alpha Activity in Human EEG (2010, background): “This mechanism has been called stochastic resonance [56] and it seems plausible to assume that this is the cause for observed behavioral effects like phosphenes [2,57].”
The benefits of noise in neural systems: bridging theory and experiment (2011, background): “By the mid 1990s, however, the concept had spread to many other scientific fields and the definition had broadened considerabl”
Human neuronal excitation/inhibition balance explains and predicts neurostimulation induced learning benefits (2023, background): “Whether this mechanism is similar (e.g., both optimal E/I and stochastic resonance are characterized by an inverted-U function; Krause et al., 2013; McDonnell & Abbott, 2009; Van der Groen & Wenderoth, 2016) or orthogonal to the stochastic resonance framework is a question for further research.”
On Natural Attunement: Shared Rhythms Between the Brain and the Environment. (2023, unknown): “These oscillations are believed to give rise to a nonlinear phenomenon, i.e., stochastic noise or resonance, that appears to help transfer information and optimize a system ’ s response to a weak signal (Deco et al., 2009; McDonnell and Abbott, 2009; Moss, 1997).”