IV. Ecosmomics: Independent Complex Network Systems, Computational Programs, Genetic Ecode Scripts

A. A Procreative Ecode: An Ecosmome to Geonome Complementary Hereditary Endowment

Dresp-Langley, Birgitta. The Grossberg Code: Universal Neural Network Signatures of Perceptual Experience. Information. 14/2, 2023. A Strasbourg University, Center for National Scientific Research neuroscholar (search) post a succinct review of Stephen Grossberg’s opus Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain (2022) along with a detailed, sequential expansion of its integral invariance from universe to us as we learn. See also her paper The Weaponization of Artificial Intelligence: What the Public Needs to be Aware Of in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (6/115484, 2023).

Two universal functional principles of Grossberg’s Adaptive Resonance Theory decipher the brain code of all biological learning and adaptive intelligence. Low-level representations of multisensory stimuli in their immediate environmental context are formed on the basis of bottom-up activation and under the control of top-down matching rules that integrate high-level, long-term traces of contextual configuration. These universal coding principles lead to the establishment of lasting brain signatures of perceptual experience in all living species, from aplysiae to primates. They are re-visited in this concept paper on the basis of examples drawn from the original code and from some of the most recent related empirical findings on contextual modulation in the brain, highlighting the potential of Grossberg’s pioneering insights and groundbreaking theoretical work for intelligent solutions in the domain of developmental and cognitive robotics. (Abstract)

Faber, Justin and Dolores Bozovic.. Criticality and Chaos in Auditory and Vestibular Sensing.. arXiv:2311.02280.. While these dual inner ear aspects have been known as critically attuned for some time, here, re UCLA neurophysicists provide a latest theoretic and empirical verification. With regard to our website content, still another strong, functional instance is noted where even i the way we hear sounds and keep steady resides in a optimum self-organized critical state.

The auditory and vestibular (sense of balance) systems exhibit a high temporal acuity and frequency selectivity, allowing us to make sense of the noisy world around us. Since this acoustic environment spans several orders of magnitude in amplitude and frequency, these complementary activities rely on nonlinearities, power-law scaling, chaos, and dynamical systems theory, with many relevant phenomena described by critical behavior. (Excerpt)

Frolov, Nikita and Alexander Hramov. Self-Organized Bistability on Scale-Free Networks. arXiv:2211.06111. In this litany of SOC occurrences, Center for Neurotechnology and Machine Learning, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, scientists identify still another instance by way of extreme human cerebral states which takes on this double bilateral dynamic mode. (by whatever lights then might such endemic findings be applied to cease insane warfare)

A dynamical system approaching the first-order transition can exhibit a critical behavior known as self-organized bistability SOB which can switch between oexisting states under self-tuning of a control parameter. Here, we theoretically explore an extension of the SOB concept on the scale-free network which originates from facilitated criticality macro- and mesoscopic levels. The spatial self-organization and temporal self-similarity of the critical dynamics then replicates epileptic seizure recurrences. Thus our proposed conceptual model can deepen the understanding of emergent collective behavior behind neurological diseases. (Excerpt)

Gao, Chong-Yu and Jun-Jie Wei. Scale-invariant Phenomena in Repeating Fast Radio Bursts and Glitching Pulsars. arXiv:2401.13916. As the Abstract says, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei astrophysicists report a seemingly ubiquitous tendency for active astronomical phenomena to persist in a dynamic self-similar criticality. See also Distributions of energy, luminosity, duration, and waiting times of gamma-ray burst pulses with known redshift detected by Fermi/GBM at arXiv:2401.14063 and The Self-organized Criticality Behaviors of Two New Parameters in SGR J1935+2154 at arXiv:2401.05955.

The recent discoveries of a glitch/antiglitch accompanied by fast radio burst (FRB)-like bursts from the Galactic magnetar SGR J1935+2154 have revealed the physical connection between the two. In this work, we study the statistical properties of radio bursts from the hyperactive repeating source FRB 20201124A. We confirm that the probability density fluctuations of energy, peak flux, duration, and waiting time well follow the Tsallis q-Gaussian distribution. Similar scale-invariant property can be found in PSR B1737--30's glitches. These statistical features can be well understood within the same physical framework of self-organized criticality systems. (Excerpt)

Ge, Xiaofei, et al. Self-Organized Critical Dynamics of RNA Virus Evolution. arXiv:2204.08627. We cite this entry by Tsinghua University, Beijing and University of Paris researchers amongst a rush of nonlinear COVID studies which show how its etiologies can be deeply modeled complex network science. Once again, even in highly stressed, variegated disease pandemic, these mathematic dynamics seek and reside at a default condition poised between more or less relative order. A payoff would be that the past two intense years of such findings could result in methods to identify, prevent and control future epidemics

Studies of RNA virus (e.g., SARS-CoV-2) evolution are vital for understanding molecular evolution and medicine development but so far remain insufficient. Here, we characterize the RNA virus evolution as a physical system with absorbing states and avalanche behaviors. This approach maps biological data (e.g., phylogenetic tree and infection) to a general stochastic process which enables researchers to verify a self-organized criticality underlying RNA virus evolution. We find that SARS-CoV-2 exhibits scale-invariant avalanches as mean-field theory predicts. The lineages that emerge from such critical evolution coincidentally also match the Delta variant. (Abstract excerpt)

Guan, Shaohua. Universal scaling relation and criticality in bacterial metabolism and growth. arXiv:2308.04776. Four Chinese Academy of Sciences system theorists deftly apply the latest criticality findings so to perceive their optimum invariant occasion across life's earlier phases. Into mid 2923, the evidence grows broadly stronger by the weekly postings

The metabolic network plays a crucial role in regulating bacterial metabolism and growth, but it is subject to inherent molecular stochasticity. In this study, we employ a maximum entropy approach to investigate the universality in various constraint-based metabolic networks of Escherichia coli. Our findings reveal the existence of universal scaling relations across different nutritional environments and metabolic network models, similar to the universality observed in physics. By analyzing single-cell data, we confirm that bacterial metabolism operates close to the state with maximum Fisher information, which serves as a signature of criticality. This critical state provides functional advantages such as high sensitivity and long-range correlation. Moreover, we demonstrate that a metabolic system operating at criticality achieves an optimal balance between growth and adaptation, thereby serving as a survival strategy in fluctuating environments. (Abstract)

Hancock, Fran, et al. Metastability Demystified—The Foundational Past, the Pragmatic Present, and the Potential Future. preprints202307.1445.v1.pdf.. King's College London, University of Sussex, University of Newcastle, Australia, Florida Atlantic University, Oxford and Montreal Neurological Institute including Fernando Rosas, Scott Kelso and Andrea Luppi provide a latest comprehensive survey of wide and deep tendencies to arrange and optimize cerebral functions as a best bicameral balancing act between chimera-like more or less coherent states. Once again into 2024 these many findings, aka self-organized criticalities, approach a proven mathematical veracity which contribute to manifold discoveries of a natural universality across the infinities. See also The Squiggle Sense: The Complementary Nature and the Metastable Brain~Mind by Scott Kelso and David Engstrom (Springer, 2024) for another version.

Healthy brain functioning depends on stable integration between areas for coordinated functioning to reconfigure and express localization. Metastability, a concept that joins statistical physics and dynamical systems theory, could be a key signature of this trait. In regard, the neuroscience literature has used markers of metastability to attribute brain functions such as cognitive performance, healthy ageing, meditation, sleep, and pharmacological issues to psychiatric disorders. In this paper we review metastability neuroscience, covering its scientific and historical foundations and to estimate it in empirical data. (Excerpts)

The notion of “metastability” has been increasingly employed in neuroscience investigations.1 Metastability has been associated with coexisting tendencies in neuronal populations (e.g., brain regions) to work collectively by coordinating the activity across multiple brain regions while also exhibiting segregated activity to allow the performance of specialised functions. Thus, metastability is said to reflect a mixture of cooperation and relative independence between brain areas in response to inputs from the environment; it is considered to be a fundamental signature of high brain functions. (!)

Hurtado-Gutiérrez, Hurtado-Gutiérrez. Programmable time crystals from higher-order packing fields. Physical Review E. 111/934119, 2025. We cite these findings by Electromagnetismo y Física de la Materia, Universidad de Granada researchers as still another window on the ubiquitous presence of critically poised, transitional phenomena in any manner of the curious geometric formations that an animated nature can take.

Time crystals are many-body systems that break time-translation symmetry, exhibit spatiotemporal order and periodic motion. Recent results have shown that coupling an external packing field to density fluctuations can trigger a transition to a time-crystal phase. Here, we exploit this mechanism to create on-demand programmable time crystals and elucidate the underlying critical point. Overall, these results demonstrate the versatility and broad possibilities of this promising route to time crystals. (Excerpt)
A scaling analysis of the results allows us to determine critical points which characterize this class of time-crystal phase transitions. Their exponents are compatible with the Kuramoto universality class that characterizes the synchronization of oscillators, independently of the packing order. We also define the condensates density profiles predicted for the higher-order shapes in terms of first-order ones. (10)

Jensen, Henrik. Brain, Rain and Forest Fires: What is Critical about Criticality: In Praise of the Correlation Function. Journal of Physics: Complexity. 2/032002, 2021. The veteran Imperial College London mathematician (search) reviews the field of self-organized criticality studies form Per Bak in 1987 to the later global 2010s, which are now seen as entering a new phase of robust veracity. A vital nuance is then distilled that such natural propensities, especially for cerebral activities, tend more to oscillate around a poise point rather than be set in place. (But I must say that a definition of Correlation Function also seems quite malleable.)

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 self-organisation to the vicinity about a critical state. We conclude that organisation to a region of extended correlations and approximate power laws may be behaviour of interest shared between the three considered systems. (Abstract)

The similar behaviour shared between so Many different systems indicates that the basic ingredients of dynamics driven by load, spreading and relaxation will tend to organize towards configurations poised near some kind of onset of (correlated) percolation. The buildup of spatially extended structures, which then abruptly collapse through release of precipitation, neuronal firing or fires respectively in the three cases discussed, keeps turning “over critical” configuration into under “under critical” ones. (9)

It is often suggested that the reason the brain operates at or near a critical point is the hypersensitivity of this state, indicated by the divergence of the susceptibility. This seems reasonable, but there may even be reasons why the brain does not sit exactly in a critical state. It has been suggested that operating in the region across the critical point may have a computational advantages for the brain in terms of combining high data storage capability in the sub-critical region with increased information transfer in the super-critical region. (9)

Kagaya, Katsushi, et al.. Self-organized Criticality of Dendritic Readiness Potential. arXiv:2209.09075. University of Tokyo neuroresearchers report the latest sophisticated experimental proofs of nature’s widely ubiquitous avail and preference for this best balance optimum condition.

Self-organized criticality is a principle explaining avalanche-like phenomena obeying power-laws in integrate-and-fire type dynamical systems. Here, we demonstrate that the behaviorally relevant brain neurons, mediating voluntary and reflexive behaviors in crayfish show signatures of self-organized criticality. The dendritic activities reside at critical states with power-laws and scaling functions, in line with the extracellular neuronal avalanches in vertebrate species which provide similar evidence of the critical brain. Our intracellular data extend the "from crayfish to human" universality of the hypothesis. Thus the nervous systems can exploit the universal dynamics for volition across the phylogenetic tree. (Abstract)

Katsnelson, Mikhail, et al. Self-Organized Criticality in Neural Networks. arXiv:2107.03402. As MK and Tom Westerhout, Radboud University and Vitality Vanchurin, NIH, Bethesda (search VV and MK) continue to propose that such cognitive connectivities have a common natural prevalence, they advance that this SOC optimum condition ought to be appreciated for its definitive advantage. If taken to a farthest implication, the whole ecosmic uniVerse might take on the cerebral semblance of a neural net learning process. See also Emergent Quantumness in Neural Networks at 2012.05082 for another entry by the authors.

We demonstrate, both analytically and numerically, that learning dynamics of neural networks is generically attracted towards a self-organized critical state. The effect can be modeled with quartic interactions between non-trainable variables (e.g. states of neurons) and trainable variables (e.g. weight matrix). Non-trainable variables are rapidly driven towards stochastic equilibrium and trainable variables are slowly driven towards learning equilibrium described by a scale-invariant distribution on a wide range of scales. Our results suggest that the scale invariance observed in many physical and biological systems might be due to some kind of learning dynamics and support the claim that the universe might be a neural network. (Abstract)

Kauffman, Stuart, et al, eds.. The Principle of Dynamical Criticality.. Entropy. December, 2022. This is a special issue to collect a current flow of evident findings about nature’s deep propensity across the universe to seek and reside at this optimum resolve. It is edited by SK, Roberto Serra, University of Modena, Italy, and Ilya Shmulevich and Sui Huang, Institute of Systems Biology, Seattle. Among the six papers so far are Emergent Criticality in Coupled Boolean Networks by Chris Kang, et al, and Robustness and Flexibility of Neural Function through Dynamical Criticality by Marcel Magnasco (see review herein).

While life, as Darwin noted, displays “endless forms most beautiful” at a macroscopic scale, it appears much more uniform at a microscopic level, where living systems share many common structural and functional features. There are, however, few “operating principles” at a macroscale that seem to hold for large classes of organisms. A promising candidate is the “criticality” principle, whereby evolution would have driven living beings towards critical states, since they are should be favorably selected over those that are chaotic or ordered. Moreover, since dynamically critical states are endowed with computational properties, they are interesting outside the domain of biology, such as artificial designs. (Excerpt)

Previous   1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7  Next