About the Authors

Alessandro Taloni

Affiliation Istituto per l'Energetica e le Interfasi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Milan, Italy

Alexander A. Alemi

Affiliation Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America

Emilio Ciusani

Affiliation Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta, Milan, Italy

James P. Sethna

Affiliation Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America

Stefano Zapperi

Affiliations Istituto per l'Energetica e le Interfasi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Milan, Italy, Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation, Turin, Italy

Caterina A. M. La Porta

caterina.laporta@unimi.it

Affiliation Department of Biosciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: CAMLP. Performed the experiments: EC CAMLP. Analyzed the data: CAMLP AT SZ. Wrote the paper: AT SZ CAMLP. Designed the computational model: AT JPS SZ. Wrote the simulation code: AAA. Performed numerical simulations: AT.