Generation of population activities such as hippocampal sharp wave ripples and epileptiform discharges follows an emergent dynamics. During my postdoc, we discovered that population discharges are initiated at a threshold level of population firing after recovery from a previous event (de la Prida et al., Neuron 2016). Each population discharge follows an active buildup period when synaptic recruitment and cell firing increase to threshold levels. Firing of densely connected individual hub cells can advance the onset of population events by increasing population firing to suprathreshold values. We proposed a theoretical framework to understand sharp-wave ripple emergence.