Abstract
Earlier research work on the dynamics of the brain, disclosing the existence of crucial events, is revisited for the purpose of making the action of crucial events, responsible for the 1/f −noise in the brain, compatible with the wave-like nature of the brain processes. We review the relevant neurophysiological literature to make clear that crucial events are generated by criticality. We also show that although criticality generates a strong deviation from the regular wave-like behavior, under the form of Rapid Transition Processes, the brain dynamics also host crucial events in regions of nearly coherent oscillations, thereby making many crucial events virtually invisible. Furthermore, the anomalous scaling generated by the crucial events can be established with high accuracy by means of direct analysis of raw data, suggested by a theoretical perspective not requiring the crucial events to yield a visible physical effect. The latter follows from the fact that periodicity, waves and crucial events are the consequences of a spontaneous process of self-organization. We obtain three main results: (a) the important role of crucial events is confirmed and established with greater accuracy than previously; (b) we demonstrate the theoretical tools necessary to understand the joint action of crucial events and periodicity; (c) we argue that the results of this paper can be used to shed light on the nature of this important process of self-organization, thereby contributing to the understanding of cognition.
Highlights
Following the dynamics of the brain is a challenging issue that has forced researchers to go beyond applying the conventional forms of non-equilibrium statistical physics (Papo, 2013) and is expected to contribute to reshaping the emerging field of complex networks as well (Papo et al, 2014)
selforganized temporal criticality (SOTC) shows that this cognition emerges naturally from a social interaction where the degree of social attention, which is related in some way to the control parameter of the ordinary approaches to phase transitions, is changed by the single individuals and it increases or decreases according to whether their overall social benefit increases or decreases
The adoption of the Rapid Transition Processes (RTPs) method makes it easy to establish the non-local nature of the brain criticality (Allegrini et al, 2010)
Summary
Following the dynamics of the brain is a challenging issue that has forced researchers to go beyond applying the conventional forms of non-equilibrium statistical physics (Papo, 2013) and is expected to contribute to reshaping the emerging field of complex networks as well (Papo et al, 2014). Bridging Waves and Crucial Events functionality of different physical regions of the brain This connection between brain dynamics and phase transition processes at criticality led the present investigators to focus on the concept of crucial events. In the sequel (Contoyiannis et al, 2002) they pointed out that this connection with Type I intermittency can be formally expressed through a waiting-time probability density function (PDF) ψ(τ ), with a dominant inverse power law (IPL) structure, with IPL index μ. On the other hand , the statistical analysis of molecular diffusion in biological cells (Metzler et al, 2014) shows that these processes are not ergodic, since they host crucial events. The widely shared idea that the brain operates at criticality led to the discovery that crucial events act on the brain This important conclusion left open two important problems, hereby illustrated.
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