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Overweight and obese individuals tend to have increased brain age, reflecting poorer brain health likely due to grey and white matter atrophy related to obesity. However, it is unclear if older brain age associated with obesity can be…
Large-scale white matter pathways crisscrossing the cortex create a complex pattern of connectivity that underlies human cognitive function. Generative mechanisms for this architecture have been difficult to identify in part because little…
Evolutionary game theory has traditionally employed deterministic models to describe population dynamics. These models, due to their inherent nonlinearities, can exhibit deterministic chaos, where population fluctuations follow complex,…
Large scale databases are available that contain homologous gene families constructed from hundreds of complete genome sequences from across the three domains of Life. Here we discuss approches of increasing complexity aimed at extracting…
The evolution of spiking neurons and nervous systems in the late Ediacaran period simultaneously with the evolution of carnivores around 550 million years ago can be explained by the need for accurately timed decisions under an imminent…
This is the first in a series of connected papers discussing the problem of a dynamically reconfigurable universal learning neurocomputer that could serve as a computational model for the whole human brain. The whole series is entitled "The…
Human brain development is a complex and dynamic process that begins during the first weeks of pregnancy and lasts until early adulthood. This chapter focuses on the developmental window from prenatal period to infancy, probably the most…
We study the influence of stochastic effects due to finite population size in the evolutionary dynamics of populations interacting in the multi-person Prisoner's Dilemma game. This paper is an extension of the investigation presented in a…
In social sciences, there is currently no consensus on the mechanism for cultural evolution. The evolution of first names of newborn babies offers a remarkable example for the researches in the field. Here we perform statistical analyses on…
Recent studies show evidence for emergent cognitive abilities in Large Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs). The increasing cognitive alignment of these models has made them candidates for cognitive science theories. Prior research into the…
Epochal dynamics, in which long periods of stasis in population fitness are punctuated by sudden innovations, is a common behavior in both natural and artificial evolutionary processes. We use a recent quantitative mathematical analysis of…
We investigate further several properties of the minority game we have recently introduced. We explain the origin of the phase transition and give an analytical expression of $\sigma^2/N$ in the $N\ll2^M$ region. The ability of the players…
Given the remarkable capabilities of large language models (LLMs), there has been a growing interest in evaluating their similarity to the human brain. One approach towards quantifying this similarity is by measuring how well a model…
Within the framework of population genetics we consider the evolution of an asexual haploid population under the effect of a rapidly varying natural selection (microevolution). We focus on the case in which the environment exerting…
A few million words suffice for children to acquire language. Yet, the brain mechanisms underlying this unique ability remain poorly understood. To address this issue, we investigate neural activity recorded from over 7,400 electrodes…
The mammalian brain is a metabolically expensive device, and evolutionary pressures have presumably driven it to make productive use of its resources. For sensory areas, this concept has been expressed more formally as an optimality…
In the human brain, the allowed patterns of activity are constrained by the correlations between brain regions. Yet it remains unclear which correlations -- and how many -- are needed to predict large-scale neural activity. Here, we present…
Determining if the brain is developing normally is a key component of pediatric neuroradiology and neurology. Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of infants demonstrates a specific pattern of development beyond simply myelination. While…
Brain imaging has allowed neuroscientists to analyze brain morphology in genetic and neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Down syndrome, pinpointing regions of interest to unravel the neuroanatomical underpinnings of cognitive impairment…
We offer a general theoretical framework for brain and behavior that is evolutionarily and computationally plausible. The brain in our abstract model is a network of nodes and edges. Although it has some similarities to standard neural…