Comment on ``Critical branching captures activity in living neural networks and maximizes the number of metastable states

It is shown that, contrary to the claims in a recent letter by Haldeman and Beggs (PRL, 94, 058101, 2005), the branching ratio in epileptic cortical cultures is smaller than one. In addition, and also in contrast to claims made in that paper, the number of metastable states is not significantly different between cortical cultures in the critical state and cultures made epileptic using picrotoxin.