In physics, chemistry and materials science, percolation (from Lat. percōlāre, to filter or trickle through) refers to the movement and filtering of fluids through porous materials.
During the last five decades, percolation theory, an extensive mathematical model of percolation, has brought new understanding and techniques to a broad range of topics in physics, materials science, complex networks, epidemiology, and other fields . For example, in geology, percolation refers to filtration of water through soil and permeable rocks. The water flows to groundwater storage (aquifer).
Percolation typically exhibits universality. Statistical physics concepts such as scaling theory, renormalization, phase transition, critical phenomena and fractals are used to characterize percolation properties. Combinatorics is commonly employed to study percolation thresholds.
Due to the complexity involved in obtaining exact results from analytical models of percolation, computer simulations are typically used. The current fastest algorithm for percolation was published in 2000 by Mark Newman and Robert Ziff.
Percolation (from the Latin word percolatio, meaning filtration) is a theoretical model used to understand the way activation and diffusion of neural activity occur within neural networks. Percolation is a model used to explain how neural activity is transmitted across the various connections within the brain. Often it is easiest to understand percolation theory by explaining its use in epidemiology. Individuals that are infected with a disease can spread the disease through contact with others in their social network. Those who are more social and come into contact with more people will help to propagate the disease quicker than those who are less social. Therefore factors such as occupation and sociability influence the rate of infection. Now, if one were to think of neurons as the individuals and synaptic connections as the social bonds between people, then one can determine how easily messages between neurons will spread. When a neuron fires, the message is transmitted along all synaptic connections to other neurons until it can no longer continue. Synaptic connections are considered either open or closed (like a social or unsocial person) and messages will flow along any and all open connections until they can go no further. Just like occupation and sociability play a key role in the spread of disease, so too do the number of neurons, synaptic plasticity and long-term potentiation when talking about neural percolation.