HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLES FEATURED IN PHYSICS EDITORS' SUGGESTION Stepping into the Sea of Instability: The New Sub-μ⁢s Superheavy Nucleus 252 Rf J. Khuyagbaatar, P. Mosat, J. Ballof, R. A. Cantemir, Ch. E. Düllmann, K. Hermainski, F. P. Heßberger, E. Jäger, B. Kindler, J. Krier, N. Kurz, S. Löchner, B. Lommel, B. Schausten, Y. Wei, P. Wieczorek, and A. Yakushev Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022501 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 The discovery of an isotope, rutherfordium-252, whose ground state forestalls fission for just 60 nanoseconds, could help theorists understand the cosmic synthesis of superheavy elements. FEATURED IN PHYSICS EDITORS' SUGGESTION 115 In+ − 172 Yb+ Coulomb Crystal Clock with 2.5×10−18 Systematic Uncertainty H. N. Hausser, J. Keller, T. Nordmann, N. M. Bhatt, J. Kiethe, H. Liu, I. M. Richter, M. von Boehn, J. Rahm, S. Weyers, E. Benkler, B. Lipphardt, S. Dörscher, K. Stahl, J. Klose, C. Lisdat, M. Filzinger, N. Huntemann, E. Peik, and T. E. Mehlstäubler Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023201 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 Researchers have built an optical clock using an array of trapped ions—an architecture that can be scaled up to boost the clock’s precision. FEATURED IN PHYSICS EDITORS' SUGGESTION Smooth Exact Gradient Descent Learning in Spiking Neural Networks Christian Klos and Raoul-Martin Memmesheimer Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 027301 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 By incorporating electrical pulses with shapes similar to those of the spikes from biological neurons, researchers improved the ability to train energy-efficient types of neural networks. FEATURED IN PHYSICS EDITORS' SUGGESTION Critical Avalanches in Excitation-Inhibition Balanced Networks Reconcile Response Reliability with Sensitivity for Optimal Neural Representation Zhuda Yang, Junhao Liang, and Changsong Zhou Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 028401 (2025) - Published 15 January, 2025 A new model reveals that bursts of neural activity known as critical avalanches underlie the brain’s ability to respond consistently to stimuli. FEATURED IN PHYSICS Unified Flow Rule of Undeveloped and Fully Developed Dense Granular Flows down Rough Inclines Yanbin Wu, Thomas Pähtz, Zixiao Guo, Lu Jing, Zhao Duan, and Zhiguo He Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 028201 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Measurements of grains flowing down an inclined plane have uncovered general principles that may help researchers model rockslides and other granular flows. EDITORS' SUGGESTION Hybridized Soliton Lasing in Coupled Semiconductor Lasers Theodore P. Letsou, Dmitry Kazakov, Pawan Ratra, Lorenzo L. Columbo, Massimo Brambilla, Franco Prati, Cristina Rimoldi, Sandro Dal Cin, Nikola Opačak, Henry O. Everitt, Marco Piccardo, Benedikt Schwarz, and Federico Capasso Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023802 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 An experiment demonstrates that a chip-scale coupled laser system consisting of a pair of coupled semiconductor ring lasers can exhibit complex optical states impossible to achieve in a single waveguide laser. EDITORS' SUGGESTION Optical Imaging of Laser-Driven Fast Electron Weibel-like Filamentation in Overcritical Density Plasma N. P. Dover, O. Tresca, N. Cook, O. C. Ettlinger, R. J. Kingham, C. Maharjan, M. N. Polyanskiy, P. Shkolnikov, I. Pogorelsky, and Z. Najmudin Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 025102 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 A parametric study of fast electrons penetrating into an overcritical density plasma finds an experimental threshold for the development of the Weibel-like beam-driven filamentation instability and reveals the importance of observed strong collisionless background heating. EDITORS' SUGGESTION Planar Hall Effect in Quasi-Two-Dimensional Materials Koushik Ghorai, Sunit Das, Harsh Varshney, and Amit Agarwal Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026301 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 Stacked bilayer graphene can demonstrate a 2D planar Hall effect due to factors related to Berry curvature, orbital magnetic moments, and broken symmetries. EDITORS' SUGGESTION Orbital Diffusion, Polarization, and Swapping in Centrosymmetric Metals Xiaobai Ning, A. Pezo, Kyoung-Whan Kim, Weisheng Zhao, Kyung-Jin Lee, and Aurélien Manchon Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026303 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 A theory of charge, spin, and orbital diffusion applied to multiband materials and heterostructures suggests that the diffusivity of orbital angular momentum in metals is typically much lower than that of spin or charge. EDITORS' SUGGESTION Symmetry Breaking in the Superionic Phase of Silver Iodide Amir Hajibabaei, William J. Baldwin, Gábor Csányi, and Stephen J. Cox Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026306 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Simulations of superionic silver iodide show the importance of probing long time scales for this kind of material and reveal a new intermediate phase primarily characterized by a broken cation distribution that gives a mechanism for its observed memory effect. EDITORS' SUGGESTION Flat and Tunable Moiré Phonons in Twisted Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides Alejandro Ramos-Alonso, Benjamin Remez, Daniel Bennett, Rafael M. Fernandes, and Héctor Ochoa Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026501 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 An out-of-plane electric field can tune the phonon dispersion of twisted van der Waals multilayers. LETTERS Quantum Information, Science, and Technology Limits to Velocity of Signal Propagation in Many-Body Systems: A Quantum Information Perspective Piotr Wysocki and Jan Chwedeńczuk Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020201 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Role of Quantum Coherence in Kinetic Uncertainty Relations Kacper Prech, Patrick P. Potts, and Gabriel T. Landi Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020401 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 Thermal Area Law in Long-Range Interacting Systems Donghoon Kim, Tomotaka Kuwahara, and Keiji Saito Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020402 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Protect Measurement-Induced Phase Transition from Noise Dongheng Qian and Jing Wang Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020403 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 Semiclassical Limit of Resonance States in Chaotic Scattering Roland Ketzmerick, Florian Lorenz, and Jan Robert Schmidt Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020404 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Non-Markovian Feedback for Optimized Quantum Error Correction Matteo Puviani, Sangkha Borah, Remmy Zen, Jan Olle, and Florian Marquardt Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020601 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 Pauli Noise Learning for Mid-Circuit Measurements Jordan Hines and Timothy Proctor Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020602 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 Long-Range 𝑍⁢𝑍 Interaction via Resonator-Induced Phase in Superconducting Qubits Xiang Deng, Wen Zheng, Xudong Liao, Haoyu Zhou, Yangyang Ge, Jie Zhao, Dong Lan, Xinsheng Tan, Yu Zhang, Shaoxiong Li, and Yang Yu Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020801 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 Fundamental Limit on the Power of Entanglement Assistance in Quantum Communication Lasse H. Wolff, Paula Belzig, Matthias Christandl, Bergfinnur Durhuus, and Marco Tomamichel Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 020802 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Gravitation Inference of the Mass Composition of Cosmic Rays with Energies from 1018.5 to 1020  eV Using the Pierre Auger Observatory and Deep Learning A. Abdul Halim et al. (Pierre Auger Collaboration) Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021001 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 Particles and Fields Quantized Axial Charge of Staggered Fermions and the Chiral Anomaly Arkya Chatterjee, Salvatore D. Pace, and Shu-Heng Shao Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021601 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Distinguishing Dirac from Majorana Heavy Neutrino at Future Lepton Colliders Qing-Hong Cao, Kun Cheng, and Yandong Liu Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021801 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 First Direct Search for Light Dark Matter Using the NEON Experiment at a Nuclear Reactor J. J. Choi, C. Ha, E. J. Jeon, J. Y. Kim, K. W. Kim, S. H. Kim, S. K. Kim, Y. D. Kim, Y. J. Ko, B. C. Koh, S. H. Lee, I. S. Lee, H. Lee, H. S. Lee, J. S. Lee, Y. M. Oh, and B. J. Park (NEON Collaboration) Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021802 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Observation of Λ+ 𝑐→Λ⁢𝑎0⁢(980)+ and Evidence for Σ⁢(1380)+ in Λ+ 𝑐→Λ⁢𝜋+⁢𝜂 M. Ablikim et al. (BESIII Collaboration) Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 021901 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Nuclear Physics Deciphering Hypertriton and Antihypertriton Spins from Their Global Polarizations in Heavy-Ion Collisions Kai-Jia Sun, Dai-Neng Liu, Yun-Peng Zheng, Jin-Hui Chen, Che Ming Ko, and Yu-Gang Ma Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022301 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Disentangling Centrality Bias and Final-State Effects in the Production of High-𝑝𝑇 Neutral Pions Using Direct Photon in 𝑑+Au Collisions at √𝑠𝑁⁢𝑁=200  GeV N. J. Abdulameer et al. (PHENIX Collaboration) Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022302 (2025) - Published 15 January, 2025 Probing Strangeness Hadronization with Event-by-Event Production of Multistrange Hadrons S. Acharya et al. (ALICE Collaboration) Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022303 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 FEATURED IN PHYSICS EDITORS' SUGGESTION Stepping into the Sea of Instability: The New Sub-μ⁢s Superheavy Nucleus 252 Rf J. Khuyagbaatar, P. Mosat, J. Ballof, R. A. Cantemir, Ch. E. Düllmann, K. Hermainski, F. P. Heßberger, E. Jäger, B. Kindler, J. Krier, N. Kurz, S. Löchner, B. Lommel, B. Schausten, Y. Wei, P. Wieczorek, and A. Yakushev Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022501 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 The discovery of an isotope, rutherfordium-252, whose ground state forestalls fission for just 60 nanoseconds, could help theorists understand the cosmic synthesis of superheavy elements. First Identification of Excited States in 78 Zr and Implications for Isospin Nonconserving Forces in Nuclei G. L. Zimba et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022502 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Gamma Decay of the 154 Sm Isovector Giant Dipole Resonance: Smekal-Raman Scattering as a Novel Probe of Nuclear Ground-State Deformation J. Kleemann, N. Pietralla, U. Friman-Gayer, J. Isaak, O. Papst, K. Prifti, V. Werner, A. D. Ayangeakaa, T. Beck, G. Colò, M. L. Cortés, S. W. Finch, M. Fulghieri, D. Gribble, K. E. Ide, X. K.-H. James, R. V. F. Janssens, S. R. Johnson, P. Koseoglou, Krishichayan, D. Savran, and W. Tornow Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 022503 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics FEATURED IN PHYSICS EDITORS' SUGGESTION 115 In+ − 172 Yb+ Coulomb Crystal Clock with 2.5×10−18 Systematic Uncertainty H. N. Hausser, J. Keller, T. Nordmann, N. M. Bhatt, J. Kiethe, H. Liu, I. M. Richter, M. von Boehn, J. Rahm, S. Weyers, E. Benkler, B. Lipphardt, S. Dörscher, K. Stahl, J. Klose, C. Lisdat, M. Filzinger, N. Huntemann, E. Peik, and T. E. Mehlstäubler Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023201 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 Researchers have built an optical clock using an array of trapped ions—an architecture that can be scaled up to boost the clock’s precision. Observation of Relaxation Stages in a Nonequilibrium Closed Quantum System: Decaying Turbulence in a Trapped Superfluid M. A. Moreno-Armijos, A. R. Fritsch, A. D. García-Orozco, S. Sab, G. Telles, Y. Zhu, L. Madeira, S. Nazarenko, V. I. Yukalov, and V. S. Bagnato Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023401 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Coherence of an Electronic Two-Level System under Continuous Charge Sensing by a Quantum Dot Detector Subhomoy Haldar, Morten Munk, Harald Havir, Waqar Khan, Sebastian Lehmann, Claes Thelander, Kimberly A. Dick, Peter Samuelsson, Patrick P. Potts, and Ville F. Maisi Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023601 (2025) - Published 15 January, 2025 Quantum State Transfer via a Multimode Resonator Yang He and Yu-Xiang Zhang Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023602 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Diagnosis for Band Topology under Crystal Symmetries Based on Bulk Measurements Shiyin Jia, Shiqi Li, Junzheng Hu, Renwen Huang, Jing Li, Biye Xie, Peng Zhan, and Zhenlin Wang Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023801 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 EDITORS' SUGGESTION Hybridized Soliton Lasing in Coupled Semiconductor Lasers Theodore P. Letsou, Dmitry Kazakov, Pawan Ratra, Lorenzo L. Columbo, Massimo Brambilla, Franco Prati, Cristina Rimoldi, Sandro Dal Cin, Nikola Opačak, Henry O. Everitt, Marco Piccardo, Benedikt Schwarz, and Federico Capasso Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023802 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 An experiment demonstrates that a chip-scale coupled laser system consisting of a pair of coupled semiconductor ring lasers can exhibit complex optical states impossible to achieve in a single waveguide laser. Metasurface Polarization Optics: Phase Manipulation for Arbitrary Polarization Conversion Condition Siqi Li, Chen Chen, Guoxi Wang, Suyang Ge, Jiaqi Zhao, Xianshun Ming, Wei Zhao, Tao Li, and Wenfu Zhang Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023803 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Enabling All-to-Circular Polarization Up-Conversion by Nonlinear Chiral Metasurfaces with Rotational Symmetry Dmitrii Gromyko, Jun Siang Loh, Jiangang Feng, Cheng-Wei Qiu, and Lin Wu Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 023804 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 Plasma and Solar Physics, Accelerators and Beams All-Optical Blast-Wave Control of Laser Wakefield Acceleration in a Near-Critical Plasma I. Tsymbalov, D. Gorlova, K. Ivanov, E. Starodubtseva, R. Volkov, I. Tsygvintsev, Yu. Kochetkov, Ph. Korneev, A. Polonski, and A. Savel’ev Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 025101 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 EDITORS' SUGGESTION Optical Imaging of Laser-Driven Fast Electron Weibel-like Filamentation in Overcritical Density Plasma N. P. Dover, O. Tresca, N. Cook, O. C. Ettlinger, R. J. Kingham, C. Maharjan, M. N. Polyanskiy, P. Shkolnikov, I. Pogorelsky, and Z. Najmudin Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 025102 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 A parametric study of fast electrons penetrating into an overcritical density plasma finds an experimental threshold for the development of the Weibel-like beam-driven filamentation instability and reveals the importance of observed strong collisionless background heating. Excitation of Alfvénic Modes via Electromagnetic Turbulence in Wendelstein 7-X Jörg Riemann, Sara Vaz Mendes, Kian Rahbarnia, Ralf Kleiber, Christoph Slaby, Axel Könies, Matthias Borchardt, Alexey Mishchenko, Henning Thomsen, Charlotte Büschel, Adrian von Stechow, the Wendelstein 7-X Team, Jan-Peter Bähner, Søren Kjer Hansen, and Eric Edlund Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 025103 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Condensed Matter and Materials Nonlinear Superconducting Magnetoelectric Effect Jin-Xin Hu, Oles Matsyshyn, and Justin C. W. Song Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026001 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Superconducting Meron Phase in Locally Noncentrosymmetric Superconductors Akihiro Minamide and Youichi Yanase Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026002 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 EDITORS' SUGGESTION Planar Hall Effect in Quasi-Two-Dimensional Materials Koushik Ghorai, Sunit Das, Harsh Varshney, and Amit Agarwal Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026301 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 Stacked bilayer graphene can demonstrate a 2D planar Hall effect due to factors related to Berry curvature, orbital magnetic moments, and broken symmetries. Temperature Dependence of Electron Viscosity in Superballistic GaAs Point Contacts Daniil I. Sarypov, Dmitriy A. Pokhabov, Arthur G. Pogosov, Evgeny Yu. Zhdanov, Andrey A. Shevyrin, Askhat K. Bakarov, and Alexander A. Shklyaev Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026302 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 EDITORS' SUGGESTION Orbital Diffusion, Polarization, and Swapping in Centrosymmetric Metals Xiaobai Ning, A. Pezo, Kyoung-Whan Kim, Weisheng Zhao, Kyung-Jin Lee, and Aurélien Manchon Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026303 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 A theory of charge, spin, and orbital diffusion applied to multiband materials and heterostructures suggests that the diffusivity of orbital angular momentum in metals is typically much lower than that of spin or charge. Quantum Nonlinear Acoustic Hall Effect and Inverse Acoustic Faraday Effect in Dirac Insulators Ying Su, Alexander V. Balatsky, and Shi-Zeng Lin Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026304 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 Giant Third-Order Nonlinearity Induced by the Quantum Metric Quadrupole in Few-Layer WTe2 Xing-Yu Liu, An-Qi Wang, Dong Li, Tong-Yang Zhao, Xin Liao, and Zhi-Min Liao Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026305 (2025) - Published 16 January, 2025 EDITORS' SUGGESTION Symmetry Breaking in the Superionic Phase of Silver Iodide Amir Hajibabaei, William J. Baldwin, Gábor Csányi, and Stephen J. Cox Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026306 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Simulations of superionic silver iodide show the importance of probing long time scales for this kind of material and reveal a new intermediate phase primarily characterized by a broken cation distribution that gives a mechanism for its observed memory effect. EDITORS' SUGGESTION Flat and Tunable Moiré Phonons in Twisted Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides Alejandro Ramos-Alonso, Benjamin Remez, Daniel Bennett, Rafael M. Fernandes, and Héctor Ochoa Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026501 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 An out-of-plane electric field can tune the phonon dispersion of twisted van der Waals multilayers. Fermionic Isometric Tensor Network States in Two Dimensions Zhehao Dai, Yantao Wu, Taige Wang, and Michael P. Zaletel Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026502 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Magnon Spin Transport through Atomic Ferrimagnetic Domain Walls Zhaozhuo Zeng and Peng Yan Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026701 (2025) - Published 15 January, 2025 Anomalous Spin and Orbital Hall Phenomena in Antiferromagnetic Systems J. E. Abrão, E. Santos, J. L. Costa, J. G. S. Santos, J. B. S. Mendes, and A. Azevedo Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026702 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Ultrafast Optical Control of Rashba Interactions in a TMDC Heterostructure Henry Mittenzwey, Abhijeet M. Kumar, Raghav Dhingra, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Cornelius Gahl, Kirill I. Bolotin, Malte Selig, and Andreas Knorr Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026901 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Strategy for Direct Detection of Chiral Phonons with Phase-Structured Free Electrons Marc R. Bourgeois, Andrew W. Rossi, and David J. Masiello Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026902 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Multiple Carrier Generation at an Exceptionally Low Energy Threshold Riyanka Karmakar, Pravrati Taank, Debjit Ghoshal, Pushpendra Yadav, Dipendranath Mandal, Megha Shrivastava, Amit Agarwal, Matthew C. Beard, Elisa M. Miller, and K. V. Adarsh Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026903 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Twist-Angle-Dependent Valley Polarization of Intralayer Moiré Excitons in van der Waals Superlattices Renqi Wang, Kai Chang, Wenhui Duan, Yong Xu, and Peizhe Tang Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 026904 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Observation of Nonreciprocal Diffraction of Surface Acoustic Wave Y. Nii, K. Yamamoto, M. Kanno, S. Maekawa, and Y. Onose Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 027001 (2025) - Published 14 January, 2025 Statistical Physics; Classical, Nonlinear, and Complex Systems Minimal Model for Carnot Efficiency at Maximum Power Shiling Liang (梁师翎), Yu-Han Ma, Daniel Maria Busiello, and Paolo De Los Rios Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 027101 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process on the Percolation Cluster: Waiting Time Distribution in Side Branches Chandrashekar Iyer, Mustansir Barma, Hunnervir Singh, and Deepak Dhar Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 027102 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 FEATURED IN PHYSICS EDITORS' SUGGESTION Smooth Exact Gradient Descent Learning in Spiking Neural Networks Christian Klos and Raoul-Martin Memmesheimer Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 027301 (2025) - Published 13 January, 2025 By incorporating electrical pulses with shapes similar to those of the spikes from biological neurons, researchers improved the ability to train energy-efficient types of neural networks. Polymers, Chemical Physics, Soft Matter, and Biological Physics FEATURED IN PHYSICS Unified Flow Rule of Undeveloped and Fully Developed Dense Granular Flows down Rough Inclines Yanbin Wu, Thomas Pähtz, Zixiao Guo, Lu Jing, Zhao Duan, and Zhiguo He Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 028201 (2025) - Published 17 January, 2025 Measurements of grains flowing down an inclined plane have uncovered general principles that may help researchers model rockslides and other granular flows. FEATURED IN PHYSICS EDITORS' SUGGESTION Critical Avalanches in Excitation-Inhibition Balanced Networks Reconcile Response Reliability with Sensitivity for Optimal Neural Representation Zhuda Yang, Junhao Liang, and Changsong Zhou Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 028401 (2025) - Published 15 January, 2025 A new model reveals that bursts of neural activity known as critical avalanches underlie the brain’s ability to respond consistently to stimuli.