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Many elastic structures have two possible equilibrium states: from umbrellas that become inverted in a sudden gust of wind, to nano-electromechanical switches, origami patterns and the hopper popper, which jumps after being turned…

Mismatch negativity (MMN) in humans reflects deviance detection (DD), a core neural mechanism of predictive processing. However, the fundamental principles by which DD emerges and matures during early cortical development-potentially…

A rigorous understanding of brain dynamics and function requires a conceptual bridge between multiple levels of organization, including neural spiking and network-level population activity. Mounting evidence suggests that neural networks of…

It has long been argued that neural networks have to establish and maintain a certain intermediate level of activity in order to keep away from the regimes of chaos and silence. Strong evidence for criticality has been observed in terms of…

A zero-temperature critical point has been invoked to control the anomalous behavior of granular matter as it approaches jamming or mechanical arrest. Criticality manifests itself in an anomalous spectrum of low-frequency normal modes and…

Discrete-element simulations are used to monitor several micro-scale characteristics within a granular material, demonstrating their convergence during loading toward the critical state, their stationarity at the critical state, and the…

The critical brain hypothesis receives increasing support from recent experimental results. It postulates that the brain is at a critical point between an ordered and a chaotic regime, sometimes referred to as the "edge of chaos." Another…

Small continuous sensory and mechanical perturbations have often been used to identify properties of the closed-loop neural control of posture and other systems that are approximately linear time invariant. Here we extend this approach to…

Quantification of complexity in neurophysiological signals has been studied using different methods, especially those from information or dynamical system theory. These studies revealed the dependence on different states of consciousness,…

Experimental and numerical results suggest that the brain can be viewed as a system acting close to a critical point, as confirmed by scale-free distributions of relevant quantities in a variety of different systems and models. Less…

Mindfulness training is widely recognized for its benefits in reducing depression, anxiety, and loneliness. With the rise of smartphone-based mindfulness apps, digital meditation has become more accessible, but sustaining long-term user…

In this work we study the detection of weak stimuli by spiking neurons in the presence of certain level of noisy background neural activity. Our study has focused in the realistic assumption that the synapses in the network present…

Mindfulness-based interventions have proven its efficacy in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but the underlying neurobiological mechanism is unknown. To determine the neurobiological mechanism of action of mindfulness-based…

Tasks that require information about the world imply a trade-off between the time spent on observation and the variance of the response. In particular, fast decisions need to rely on uncertain information. However, standard estimates of…

Many experimental results, both in-vivo and in-vitro, support the idea that the brain cortex operates near a critical point, and at the same time works as a reservoir of precise spatio-temporal patterns. However the mechanism at the basis…

Griffiths phases are typically associated with quenched disorder, while frustration gives rise to multistability and spin-glass behavior. Whether extended criticality can arise in other contexts remains an open question. Here, we show that…

Similar to humans and animals, deep artificial neural networks exhibit critical periods during which a temporary stimulus deficit can impair the development of a skill. The extent of the impairment depends on the onset and length of the…

The framework of Modern Theory of Critical State Transitions considers the relation between different levels of organization in complex systems in terms of Critical State Transitions. A State Transition between levels entails changes of…

The measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT) is a recently formulated phenomenon in out-of-equilibrium systems. The competition between unitary evolutions and measurement-induced non-unitaries leads to the transition between the…

Hallmarks of criticality, such as power-laws and scale invariance, have been empirically found in cortical networks and it has been conjectured that operating at criticality entails functional advantages, such as optimal computational…