Hipsters and the cool: A game theoretic analysis of identity expression, trends, and fads.

Cultural trends and popularity cycles can be observed all around us, yet our theories of social influence and identity expression do not explain what perpetuates these complex, often unpredictable social dynamics. We propose a theory of social identity expression based on the opposing, but not mutually exclusive, motives to conform and to be unique among one's neighbors in a social network. We find empirical evidence for both conformity and uniqueness motives in an analysis of the popularity of given names.

Malleability of gamma rhythms enhances population-level correlations.

An important problem in systems neuroscience is to understand how information is communicated among brain regions, and it has been proposed that communication is mediated by neuronal oscillations, such as rhythms in the gamma band. We sought to investigate this idea by using a network model with two components, a source (sending) and a target (receiving) component, both built to resemble local populations in the cerebral cortex. To measure the effectiveness of communication, we used population-level correlations in spike times between the source and target.