The human brain contains billions of neurons that rapidly interconnect to support local and global operational modes. As neuronal activity propagates through the neural medium, it approaches a critical topological state where excitation and inhibition balance out. Recent work demonstrates that this criticality coincides with the small-world topology, a network arrangement that exhibits both local (sub-critical) and global (super-critical) system properties. Clinical neuromodulation seeks to alleviate neurological disease by modulating short- and long-range neural communication, but it remains unknown how this affects the topological behavior of the small-world network. Using a variation on Watts and Strogatz’s generative small-world model, we demonstrate that short-range connections modulate the dynamics of the phase space, destabilizing the critical state while favoring the sub-critical regime as connectivity decreases. Moreover, our analysis reveals that long-range connections dominate the topological state, shifting the network from ordered to chaotic regimes as connectivity increases. Together, these findings lend support to combinatorial neuromodulation protocols to normalize the dynamics of the phase space, while facilitating the mobilization of the system state.