Crosstalk and the spectrum of biological global broadcasts: Toward generalization of the Baars consciousness model across physiological subsystems

Rodrick Wallace

doi:10.1038/npre.2012.6898.1

Abstract

AbstractOnce cognitive biological phenomena are recognized as necessarily having 'dual' information sources, it is easy to show that the information theory chain rule implies isolating coresident information sources from crosstalk requires more metabolic free energy than permitting correlation. This provides conditions for an evolutionary exaptation leading to dynamic global broadcasts of interacting cognitive biological processes analogous to, but slower than, consciousness, itself included within the paradigm. The argument is closely analogous to the well-studied exaptation of noise to trigger stochastic resonance amplification in physiological systems.

Highlights

Researchers have long speculated and experimented on the role of noise in biological process via models of stochastic resonance (e.g., Park and Neelakanta, 1996; Gluckman et al, 1996; Ward, 2009; Kawaguchi et al, 2011)
The global broadcast mechanisms of consciousness and its slower physiological generalizations make an arch of this spandrel, using the lowered free energy requirement of crosstalk interaction between low level cognitive modules as the springboard for launching rapid, tunable, more highly correlated, global broadcasts that link those modules to solve problems
Via the giant component linking lower level ‘unconscious’ cognitive modules, emerges directly, and the effects of external signals and internal ‘biological ruminations’ can be incorporated through standard arguments leading to punctuated threshold detection

Summary

Introduction

Researchers have long speculated and experimented on the role of noise in biological process via models of stochastic resonance (e.g., Park and Neelakanta, 1996; Gluckman et al, 1996; Ward, 2009; Kawaguchi et al, 2011). The evolutionary exaptation of crosstalk appears to be nested systems of shifting global biological broadcasts analogous to, but both slower and more general than, consciousness. Spandrels are the triangular sectors of the intersecting arches that support a cathedral roof. They are simple byproducts of the need for arches, and their occurrence is in no way fundamental to the construction of a cathedral. Our assertion is that crosstalk between ‘low level’ cognitive biological modules is a similar inessential byproduct that evolutionary process has exapted to construct the dynamic global broadcasts of consciousness and a spectrum of roughly analogous physiological phenomena: Evolution built many new arches from a single spandrel. We first provide a minimal formal overview that will be reexpressed in more complex form, much like Onsager’s nonequilibrium thermodynamics

Cognition as ‘language’

Reaction to environmental signals

A formal model

Discussion and conclusions

10 Mathematical Appendix