Neuronal avalanche (NA) is a particular type of pattern of collective activity that can be observed in the nervous system (other examples are oscillations, travelling waves, bumps etc).

NA seems to be a self-organized critical phenomena (power-law distribution for size and life-time, and definite branching parameter) and it is characterized by a cascade of activity bursts in a given neuronal network. A remarkable characteristic of NA is that it does not possesses wave-like behavior.

See for example http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-005-0574-y and http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/35/11167.short

Hi Abolfazl,

neuronal avalanches are very different from waves.  You can imagine an avalanche as a single pulse that propagates through whatever medium iwith an equal likelihood to continue or die out in the next time step/generation.  This is best modeled by a critical branching process.  the resulting avalanches form distinct spatiotemporal patterns that selectively branch different points in space.  avalanches have in common with waves that most of their propagation is carried out by local interactions, like dominos that topple and the cascade of toppling dominoes bridges long distances.  The important general aspect of avalanches is that they indicate a particular, critical state of the system which has many advantages for information processing. 

hope that helps,

best

dietmar plenz