Related papers: Is there sufficient evidence for criticality in co…
To understand the onset of collective motion, we investigate active systems where particles switch on and off their self-propulsion. We prove that even when the only possible transition is off$\to$on, an active 2-state system behaves as an…
Neuroscientists frequently use a certain statistical reasoning to establish the existence of distinct neuronal processes in the brain. We show that this reasoning is flawed and that the large corresponding literature needs reconsideration.…
To explain consciousness as a physical process we must acknowledge the role of energy in the brain. Energetic activity is fundamental to all physical processes and causally drives biological behaviour. Recent neuroscientific evidence can be…
The human brain is ultimately responsible for all thoughts and movements that the body produces. This allows humans to successfully interact with their environment. If the brain is not functioning properly many abilities of human can be…
Thermodynamic criticality describes emergent phenomena in a wide variety of complex systems. In the mammalian brain, the complex dynamics that spontaneously emerge from neuronal interactions have been characterized as neuronal avalanches, a…
Self-organized bistability (SOB) is the counterpart of 'self-organized criticality' (SOC), for systems tuning themselves to the edge of bistability of a discontinuous phase transition, rather than to the critical point of a continuous one.…
We present a brief review of power laws and correlation functions as measures of criticality and the relation between them. By comparing phenomenology from rain, brain and the forest fire model we discuss the relevant features of…
We introduce two sandpile models which show the same behavior of real sandpiles, that is, an almost self-organized critical behavior for small systems and the dominance of large avalanches as the system size increases. The systems become…
The question What is Complexity? has occupied a great deal of time and paper over the last 20 or so years. There are a myriad different perspectives and definitions but still no consensus. In this paper I take a phenomenological approach,…
Unlike digital computers, the brain exhibits spontaneous activity even during complete rest, despite the evolutionary pressure for energy efficiency. Inspired by the critical brain hypothesis, which proposes that the brain operates…
The disorder and a simple convex measure of complexity are studied for rank ordered power law distributions, indicative of criticality, in the case where the total number of ranks is large. It is found that a power law distribution may…
Adaptive behavior, cognition and emotion are the result of a bewildering variety of brain spatiotemporal activity patterns. An important problem in neuroscience is to understand the mechanism by which the human brain's 100 billion neurons…
Scale-invariant neuronal avalanches have been observed in cell cultures and slices as well as anesthetized and awake brains, suggesting that the brain operates near criticality, i.e. within a narrow margin between avalanche propagation and…
A large repertoire of spatiotemporal activity patterns in the brain is the basis for adaptive behaviour. Understanding the mechanism by which the brain's hundred billion neurons and hundred trillion synapses manage to produce such a range…
The influence of disordering upon critical behavior of the system with hidden degrees of freedom is considered. It is shown that there is a tricritical behavior in the constrained system, while in the unconstrained system only phase…
In a recent article, Brette argues that coding as a concept is inappropriate for explanations of neurocognitive phenomena. Here, we argue that Brette's conceptual analysis mischaracterizes the structure of causal claims in coding and other…
Observations of power laws in neural activity data have raised the intriguing notion that brains may operate in a critical state. One example of this critical state is "avalanche criticality," which has been observed in various systems,…
This paper presents a novel information-theoretic proof demonstrating that the human brain as currently understood cannot function as a classical digital computer. Through systematic quantification of distinguishable conscious states and…
The Mind-Body Problem, which constitutes the starting point for a large part of the speculations about consciousness and conscious experience, can be re-stated in an equivalent way, using the `brain duplication' argument described in this…
It has long been debated whether information in the brain is coded at the rate of neuronal spiking or at the precise timing of single spikes. Although this issue is essential to the understanding of neural signal processing, it is not…