The rise and fall of hubs in self-organized critical learning networks

Abstract

Information processing networks are the result of local rewiring rules. In many instances, such rules promote links where the activity at the two end nodes is positively correlated. The conceptual problem we address is what network architecture prevails under such rules and how does the resulting network, in turn, constrain the dynamics. We focus on a simple toy model that captures the interplay between link self-reinforcement and self-organised critical dynamics in a simple way. Our main finding is that, under these conditions, a core of densely connected nodes forms spontaneously. Moreover, we show that the appearance of such a clustered state can be dynamically regulated by a fatigue mechanism, eventually giving rise to non-trivial avalanche exponents.