Your Brain Operates at the Edge of Chaos. Why That's Actually a Good Thing

Abstraction: Neural criticality hypothesis — brains operate at the edge of chaos

Key points:

• The "critical point" (edge of chaos) is the regime where one neuron's signal propagates to approximately one other neuron; supercritical branching causes seizure-like cascades, subcritical causes signal death
• At criticality, brains achieve the optimal trade-off between linearity (information storage) and nonlinearity (computation), as published in Physical Review Letters 2022
• Deviation from criticality is associated with depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, PTSD, and epilepsy; researcher John Beggs (Indiana University) has mapped ~600 patients near quasi-criticality regions
• When ideal criticality is inaccessible, mice brains follow the "Widom line" (quasi-criticality); other researchers suggest brains work slightly below criticality or drift randomly around the critical point
• Potential therapeutic application: stimulating tissue to prevent the post-seizure overconnection that causes subsequent seizures, by tricking the brain out of its shutdown state

Connections: Indiana University · Criticality · Complex Systems · Neuroscience

Source: https://www.cnet.com/science/biology/features/your-brain-operates-at-the-edge-of-chaos-but-thats-not-a-bad-thing/