AbstractThis study proposes a theoretical framework based on the modelof brain criticality (Chialvo, 2010), hypothesizing that certain pro-files characterized by atypicality in information processing — includ-ing High Intellectual Potential (HIP) and Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD) — operate structurally closer to the critical threshold (sc) thanthe neurotypical population, interpreted as a stable structural bias to-ward criticality rather than a transient condition. In these profiles,neural fluctuations would exhibit distributions compatible with thecritical regime in a structurally stable manner, producing emergentproperties — elevated susceptibility, long-range correlations, broad dy-namic repertoire — functionally analogous to the alterations in neuralsignals documented in psychedelic states (Tagliazucchi et al., 2014;Carhart-Harris et al., 2014), independently of pharmacological induc-tion. It is further hypothesized that structural proximity to the criti-cal threshold manifests differentially across functional brain networks,producing three distinct phenomenological profiles — emotional, cog-nitive, and creative — depending on the distribution of critical fluc-tuations across limbic, frontal, and associative networks. Clinical im-plications include the reinterpretation of depression in these profilesas a subcritical transition — distinct from neurotypical hypotonic de-pression — and a reinterpretation of atypical responses to SSRIs as aconsequence of the systemic susceptibility characteristic of the criticalregime. Preliminary evidence from EEG and fMRI studies on HIPand ASD populations shows activity patterns compatible with greaterproximity to the critical regime, supporting the empirical plausibilityof the framework.1In HIP profiles, global criticality supports the innate tendency toestablish cross-domain correlations and holistic syntheses. In ASDprofiles, where the clinical phenomenology reveals a marked focus onspecific interests and a tendency toward informational segregation,proximity to sc ensures that such in-depth processing does not re-solve into mechanical or purely rigid repetition. On the contrary, theelevated dynamic susceptibility χ within the domain of interest acts asa catalyst, enabling the emergence of non-linear insights, state tran-sitions, and original conceptual elaborations. Therefore, operating inthe vicinity of the critical regime emerges as the unified and indepen-dent dynamic principle underpinning cognitive excellence and originalintuition, manifesting phenotypically through global cognitive config-urations (HIP) or focused ones (ASD). The work concludes with amethodological proposal for the empirical verification of the frame-work through the measurement of neural avalanches, long-range cor-relations, and the distribution of fluctuations in HIP and ASD popu-lations, compared with control samples using complexity measures —including Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity — as a proxy for the criticalregime.
Eleonora Ceruolo (Tue,) studied this question.