Related papers: On critical State Transitions between different le…
Adjustable autonomy refers to entities dynamically varying their own autonomy, transferring decision-making control to other entities (typically agents transferring control to human users) in key situations. Determining whether and when…
As a promising computational paradigm, occurrence of critical states in artificial and biological neural networks has attracted wide-spread attention. An often-made explicit or implicit assumption is that one single critical state is…
Interacting physical systems in the neighborhood of criticality (and massive continuum field theories) can often be characterized by just two physical scales: a (macroscopic) correlation length and a (microscopic) interaction range, related…
The global availability of communication services makes it possible to interconnect independently developed systems, called constituent systems, to provide new synergistic services and more efficient economic processes. The characteristics…
Phase transitions, characterized by abrupt shifts between macroscopic patterns of organization, are ubiquitous in complex systems. Despite considerable research in the physical and natural sciences, the empirical study of this phenomenon in…
In this essay we elaborate on recent evidence demonstrating the presence of a second order phase transition in human brain dynamics and discuss its consequences for theoretical approaches to brain function. We review early evidence of…
Cognitive function is driven by dynamic interactions between large-scale neural circuits or networks, enabling behavior. Fundamental principles constraining these dynamic network processes have remained elusive. Here we use network control…
Activity in neocortex exhibits a range of behaviors, from irregular to temporally precise, and from weakly to strongly correlated. So far there has been no single theoretical framework that could explain all these behaviors, leaving open…
Humans and animals exhibit a range of interesting behaviors in dynamic environments, and it is unclear how our brains actively reformat this dense sensory information to enable these behaviors. Experimental neuroscience is undergoing a…
Complex contagion models have been developed to understand a wide range of social phenomena such as adoption of cultural fads, the diffusion of belief, norms, and innovations in social networks, and the rise of collective action to join a…
A new prior is proposed for learning representations of high-level concepts of the kind we manipulate with language. This prior can be combined with other priors in order to help disentangling abstract factors from each other. It is…
This chapter reviews four notions of system structure, three of which are contextual and classic (i.e. the complete computational structure linked to a state space model, the sparsity pattern of a transfer function, and the interconnection…
These lecture notes want to illustrate the close connection between statistical mechanics and field theory not only on the formal level, i.e. that many concepts of one area can easily be taken over to the other one, but also on the level of…
Large language models (LLMs) often exhibit abrupt emergent behavior, whereby new abilities arise at certain points during their training. This phenomenon, commonly referred to as a ''phase transition'', remains poorly understood. In this…
We have analysed the many facets of Consciousness into two distinct categories. First: the organisational state of the neural networks at any one time, which determines whether a person is conscious - awake, or unconscious - asleep. Second:…
We give a general introduction to quantum phase transitions in strongly-correlated electron systems. These transitions which occur at zero temperature when a non-thermal parameter $g$ like pressure, chemical composition or magnetic field is…
Abrupt shifts in ecosystems, brains, markets, and climate are often diagnosed as signs of approaching a tipping point, i.e. a critical bifurcation where stability is lost. Here we reveal a broader and more deceptive mechanism:…
Systems thinking is a way of making sense about the world in terms of multilevel, nested, interacting systems, their environment, and the boundaries between the systems and the environment. In this paper we discuss the evolution of systems…
Nonlinear dynamical systems may be exposed to tipping points, critical thresholds at which small changes in the external inputs or in the systems parameters abruptly shift the system to an alternative state with a contrasting dynamical…
This paper explores the connection between dynamical system properties and statistical physics of ensembles of such systems. Simple models are used to give novel phase transitions; particularly for finite N particle systems with many…