Self-organizing Dynamical Systems Research Articles

Self-Organization in Network Sociotechnical Systems

We can observe self-organization properties in various systems. However, modern networked dynamical sociotechnical systems have some features that allow for realizing the benefits of self-organization in a wide range of systems in economic and social areas. The review examines the general principles of self-organized systems, as well as the features of the implementation of self-organization in sociotechnical systems. We also delve into the production systems, in which the technical component is decisive, and social networks, in which the social component dominates; we analyze models used for modeling self-organizing networked dynamical systems. It is shown that discrete models prevail at the micro level. Furthermore, the review deals with the features of using continuous models for modeling at the macro level.

Generative Dance as a Self-Organizing Dynamic System: A Study on Choreographic Emergence and the Phenomenon of Togetherness

In this transformative exploratory study, we propose to contribute to the defini- tion of the concept of Generative Dance based on the theory of self-organized dynamic systems, in order to: 1) Describe the concepts of Emergent Chore- ography and Generative Dance (by approximation to the Generative Art con- cept); 2) Computationally model generative dance and study the emergence of spatio-temporal patterns - using Agent-based model theory and genetic al- gorithms; 3) Explore collective improvisation, following the cycle Practice-led Research and Research-led Practice (Smith and Dean 2009), integrating the relationship principles observed in the emergent modeling behavior; 4) Know the subjective experience of space-time sharing - togetherness phenomenon - experienced in generative dance.

Coordination Dynamics: A Foundation for Understanding Social Behavior.

Humans’ interactions with each other or with socially competent machines exhibit lawful coordination patterns at multiple levels of description. According to Coordination Dynamics, such laws specify the flow of coordination states produced by functional synergies of elements (e.g., cells, body parts, brain areas, people…) that are temporarily organized as single, coherent units. These coordinative structures or synergies may be mathematically characterized as informationally coupled self-organizing dynamical systems (Coordination Dynamics). In this paper, we start from a simple foundation, an elemental model system for social interactions, whose behavior has been captured in the Haken-Kelso-Bunz (HKB) model. We follow a tried and tested scientific method that tightly interweaves experimental neurobehavioral studies and mathematical models. We use this method to further develop a body of empirical research that advances the theory toward more generalized forms. In concordance with this interdisciplinary spirit, the present paper is written both as an overview of relevant advances and as an introduction to its mathematical underpinnings. We demonstrate HKB’s evolution in the context of social coordination along several directions, with its applicability growing to increasingly complex scenarios. In particular, we show that accommodating for symmetry breaking in intrinsic dynamics and coupling, multiscale generalization and adaptation are principal evolutions. We conclude that a general framework for social coordination dynamics is on the horizon, in which models support experiments with hypothesis generation and mechanistic insights.

Scalable Decentralized Indexing and Querying of Multi-Streams in the Fog

NOA-AID (Network Overlays for Adaptive information Aggregation, Indexing and Discovery on the fog) is an approach for decentralized indexing, aggregation and discovery of data belonging to streams. It is organized on two network layers. The upper layer is in charge of delivering an information discovery approach by providing a distributed index structure. The lower layer is devoted to resource aggregation based on epidemic protocols designed for highly dynamic environment, well suited to stream-oriented scenarios. It defines a flexible approach to express queries targeting highly heterogeneous data, as well as a self-organizing dynamic system allowing the optimal resolution of queries on the most suitable stream producers. The paper also presents a theoretical study and discusses the costs related to information management operations; it also gives an empirical validation of findings. Finally, it reports an extended experimental evaluation that demonstrated the ability of NOA-AID to be effective and efficient for retrieving information extracted from streams in highly-dynamic and distributed processing architectures.

Evaluating the interplay between subclinical levels of mental health symptoms and coordination dynamics.

Viewed under the broad theoretical umbrella of an embodied-embedded approach to psychological activity, body movements can be seen to play an essential role in shaping social interaction. Of note, research concerning the embodiment of social cognition has documented key differences in non-verbal behaviour during social interaction for individuals diagnosed with a range of disorders, including social anxiety disorder and autism spectrum disorder. The present work sets out to extend these findings by better understanding the interplay between subclinical variation in psychopathology and social-motor coordination, a key component of effective interaction. We asked participants, in pairs, to swing hand-held pendula that varied in their intrinsic movement characteristics. Extending previous clinically oriented work (Varlet etal., 2014, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, 29), our results indicated that subclinical variation in mental health status was predictive of disruption to the patterns of coordination dynamics that characterize effective social exchange. This work provides further evidence for the utility of theorizing social interaction as a self-organizing dynamical system and strengthens support for the claim that disruption to interpersonal coordination may act as an embodied-embedded marker of variation in mental health.

Self-organizing dynamical networks able to learn autonomously

We present a model for the time evolution of network architectures based on dynamical systems. We show that the evolution of the existence of a connection in a network can be described as a stochastic non-Markovian telegraphic signal (NMTS). Such signal is formulated in two ways: as an algorithm and as the result of a system of differential equations. The autonomous learning conjecture (Kaluza P. and Mikhailov A. S., Phys. Rev. E, 90 (2014) 030901(R)) is implemented in the proposed dynamics. As a result, we construct self-organizing dynamical systems (networks) able to modify their structures in order to learn prescribed target functionalities. This theory is applied to two systems: the flow processing networks with time-programmed responses, and a system of first-order chemical reactions. In both cases, we show examples of the evolution and a statistical analysis of the obtained functional networks with respect to the model parameters.

ФРАКТАЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ – НЕОБХОДИМЫЙ ЭЛЕМЕНТ ГЕОМЕТРИЗАЦИИ МЕСТОРОЖДЕНИЙ ПОЛЕЗНЫХ ИСКОПАЕМЫХ

The Purpose of the paper is to prove the need for accounting the environment fractality under countouring of ore zones, bodies and geometrization of mineral deposits as well as to find the conditions of compatibility of the deterministic theory of the stratified geochemical field of the professor P. K. Sobolevsky in the conditions of fractal environment. Methods. The study uses the review of literature and researches in the field of synergetics and fractal geometry as well as mathematical processing and analysis of fractal geological systems. Results. The self-organizing dynamic system features the domination of nonlinear relationships, while the location of each fractal in the conditions of "the determined chaos" is random and unpredictable. The existing deterministic idea of a deposit as a geochemical field (P. K. Sobolevsky) meeting the condition of finitude, unambiguity, continuity, smoothness and having a stratified structure is in a conflict with the distribution discreteness of useful components, ambiguity of data (for a specific point of space). The contradiction can be eliminated if a geochemical field is considered in some volume rather than in a point and the content of a useful component or other indicators are referred to the center of this volume. The method of isolines is introduced in practically all areas of scientific knowledge. It is evident, informative enough and it is impossible to refuse it. Conclusions. The fractal analysis should be added to the methodical basis of geometrization with a system approach in scientific researches as its element since it is an integral part of synergetrics today. It will allow a more rational justification and selection of technological decisions for geological object development. When the theory of geochemical field is adapted to a certain volume of subsoil rather than to a point we obtain a random component. Therefore, it is necessary to operate random spatial fields where probabilistic methods, the theory of stochastic functions and geostatistics predominate.

Phonetic drift in Spanish-English bilinguals: Experiment and a self-organizing model

Studies of speech accommodation provide evidence for change in use of language structures beyond the critical/sensitive period. For example, Sancier and Fowler (1997) found changes in the voice-onset-times (VOTs) of both languages of a Portuguese-English bilingual as a function of her language context. Though accommodation has been studied widely within a monolingual context, it has received less attention in and between the languages of bilinguals. We tested whether these findings of phonetic accommodation, speech accommodation at the phonetic level, would generalize to a sample of Spanish-English bilinguals. We recorded participants reading Spanish and English sentences after 3–4months in the US and after 2–4weeks in a Spanish speaking country and measured the VOTs of their voiceless plosives. Our statistical analyses show that participants’ English VOTs drifted towards those of the ambient language, but their Spanish VOTs did not. We found considerable variation in the extent of individual participants’ drift in English. Further analysis of our results suggested that native-likeness of L2 VOTs and extent of active language use predict the extent of drift. We provide a model based on principles of self-organizing dynamical systems to account for our Spanish-English phonetic drift findings and the Portuguese-English findings.

Benford’s law and the FSD distribution of economic behavioral micro data

In this paper, we focus on the first significant digit (FSD) distribution of European micro income data and use information theoretic-entropy based methods to investigate the degree to which Benford’s FSD law is consistent with the nature of these economic behavioral systems. We demonstrate that Benford’s law is not an empirical phenomenon that occurs only in important distributions in physical statistics, but that it also arises in self-organizing dynamic economic behavioral systems. The empirical likelihood member of the minimum divergence-entropy family, is used to recover country based income FSD probability density functions and to demonstrate the implications of using a Benford prior reference distribution in economic behavioral system information recovery.

Nouvelle perspective en psychiatrie. De la globalité psychique à la multiplicité des troubles mentaux

The mental disorder is usually designed in very defined forms with type of relatively stable syndromes and entities. A conceptual reversal is to move from the description of apparent forms to the analysis of their hidden dynamic infrastructures, using new logical-mathematical tools and constructivist computer modeling. Then, we can consider the psyche as a comprehensive self-organizing dynamic system that changes in the contact with external environment. Driven by a specific energy of the patient, it depends of laws that help to organize multiple pathological structures that are characteristic, fluid and very changeable. The relationships of psyche with pathological forms are envisaged taking into account a hierarchy of different spatial and temporal scales. Clinical evidence supports these various concepts. Contemplated from deliriums, they show the global character, the structural diversity, the movements, the oscillations, the possible transformations and also the corresponding isomorphisms and homeomorphisms responding to an organizational law. The conclusion highlights the fact that a new paradigm, reversing the perspective of approach, provides new data transforming the mental and psychiatric landscape.

Incorporating coordination dynamics into an evolutionarily grounded science of intentional change.

We suggest the authors' endeavor toward a science of intentional change may benefit from recent advances in informationally meaningful self-organizing dynamical systems. Coordination Dynamics, having contributed to an understanding of behavior on several time scales - adaptation, learning, and development - and on different levels of analysis, from the neural to the social, may complement, if not enhance, the authors' insights.

Enactivism and the New Teleology: Reconciling the Warring Camps

Enactivism has the potential to provide a sense of teleology in purposedirected action, but without violating the principles of efficient causation. Action can be distinguished from mere reaction by virtue of the fact that some systems are self-organizing. Self-organization in the brain is reflected in neural plasticity, and also in the primacy of motivational processes that initiate the release of neurotransmitters necessary for mental and conscious functions, and which guide selective attention processes. But in order to flesh out the enactivist approach in a way that is plausible and not merely an epiphenomenon, it is necessary to confront the problem of causal closure in a serious way. Atoms and molecules in the brain do not violate the normal causal principles that govern them in other contexts. The theory of self-organizing dynamical systems must be developed in a way that is compatible with causal closure rather than contradicting it.

Patterns of Horse-Rider Coordination during Endurance Race: A Dynamical System Approach

In riding, most biomechanical studies have focused on the description of the horse locomotion in unridden condition. In this study, we draw the prospect of how the basic principles established in inter-personal coordination by the theory of Coordination Dynamics may provide a conceptual and methodological framework for understanding the horse-rider coupling. The recent development of mobile technologies allows combined horse and rider recordings during long lasting natural events such as endurance races. Six international horse-rider dyads were thus recorded during a 120 km race by using two tri-axial accelerometers placed on the horses and riders, respectively. The analysis concentrated on their combined vertical displacements. The obtained shapes and angles of Lissajous plots together with values of relative phase between horse and rider displacements at lower reversal point allowed us to characterize four coordination patterns, reflecting the use of two riding techniques per horse's gait (trot and canter). The present study shows that the concepts, methods and tools of self-organizing dynamic system approach offer new directions for understanding horse-rider coordination. The identification of the horse-rider coupling patterns constitutes a firm basis to further study the coalition of multiple constraints that determine their emergence and their dynamics in endurance race.

In Search of Ontological Emergence: Diachronic, But Non-supervenient

Most philosophical accounts of emergence are based on supervenience, with supervenience being an ontologically synchronic relation of determination. This conception of emergence as a relation of supervenience, I will argue, is unable to make sense of the kinds of emergence that are widespread in self-organizing and nonlinear dynamical systems, including distributed cognitive systems. In these dynamical systems, an emergent property is ontological (i.e., the causal capacities of P, where P is an emergent feature, are not reducible to causal capacities of the parts, and may exert a top-down causal influence on the parts of the system) and diachronic (i.e., the relata of emergence are temporally extended, and P emerges as a result of some dynamical lower-level processes that unfold in real time).

How the Effect of Emotion on the Selectivity of Attention Supports Self-Organizing Dynamical Systems as an Explanation of Consciousness

This paper attempts to provide a systematic argument, on both philosophical and neuropsychological grounds, for an “enactive” and self-organizational explanation for consciousness. The self-organizational approach offers solutions to problems that have stumped philosophers for centuries, including the problem of mental causation. Mental causation is a mystery because it seems that the unified being, the conscious person or animal, is able to make its own parts combine in certain ways to serve the purposes of the whole, rather than having its form merely dictated by the accidental ways in which the constituents come together. The theory of self-organization explicitly addresses this problem as its basic starting point. Also, many psychological puzzles about consciousness can be addressed by means of a self-organizational approach. In this paper, we consider the Mack and Rock inattentional blindness phenomena; and the micro-genesis of perceptual experience, which presents the paradox that perceptual consciousness does not accompany virtually complete occipital activation, yet does accompany the parietal P300 event related potential, which however does not seem to be caused by the occipital activation at all. We also explore the way the enactive, dynamical systems account of emotional consciousness maps onto the relatively independent, unconditioned instinctual systems studied by Panksepp and associates, as discussed in the target article of this issue.

The COST of explicit memory

Within Piaget there is an implicit theory of the development of explicit memory. It rests in the dynamical trajectory underlying the development of causality, object, space and time – a complex (COST) supporting a symbolic relationship integral to the explicit. Cassirer noted the same dependency in the phenomena of aphasias, insisting that a symbolic function is being undermined in these deficits. This is particularly critical given the reassessment of Piaget’s stages as the natural bifurcations of a self-organizing dynamic system. The elements of a theoretical framework required to support explicit memory are developed, to include, (1) the complex developmental trajectory supporting the emergence of the explicit in Piaget, (2) the concrete dynamical system and the concept of a non-differentiable time contained in Bergson’s theory required to support a conscious, as opposed to an implicit remembrance, (3) the relation to current theories of amnesia, difficulties posed by certain retrograde amnesic phenomena, the role of the hippocampus and limitations of connectionist models, (4) the fact that nowhere in this overall framework does the loss of explicit memory imply or require the destruction of experience “stored in the brain.”

Social Neuroeconomics : A dynamical systems perspective

Dans cet article nous envisageons la neuroéconomie des interactions sociales du point de vue des systèmes complexes et de la théorie des systèmes dynamiques. Nous développons le problème de la non-équivalence entre les différents niveaux d’analyse qui n’a pas encore été abordé dans le cadre de la recherche en neuroéconomie. Ce problème se pose lorsque l’on désire intégrer dans un même cadre théorique et/ou méthodologique des données collectées à différentes échelles (du niveau individuel au niveau collectif) de description dans le cerveau ou dans la société. Enfin, nous illustrons comment la théorie des systèmes dynamiques pourrait offrir des voies originales dans la compréhension des relations entre l’activité cérébrale dynamique comportementale et prise de décision. Tout comme il ne serait pas opportun de réduire les sciences économiques à une approche basée exclusivement sur les sciences physiques, nous ne désirons pas développer un cadre théorique et expérimental unique pour les sciences économiques et les neurosciences. Nous cherchons plutôt à définir plus clairement les différentes échelles de description et à mettre en exergue leur dynamique partagée. Ainsi pourrons-nous comprendre les interactions entre des phénomènes se déroulant de manière concomitante à différents niveaux d’analyse.

Art of war hidden in Kolmogorov’s equations

Here we discuss how Kolmogorov's work on turbulence can be used as the inspiration for a new description of battlefield dynamics. The method presented may also represent a new way of describing self-organizing dynamical systems, in place of conventional differential equation approaches. The key finding is that the rate of attrition in a battle appears to be a function of the fractal dimension of the opposing forces. It is suggested that, this being the case, the fractal dimension could be used as a surrogate to represent the organizational efficiency of one force relative to another, commonly called Command and Control.

Cognitive vision: The case for embodied perception

This paper considers arguments for the necessity of embodiment in cognitive vision systems. We begin by delineating the scope of cognitive vision, and follow this by a survey of the various approaches that can be taken to the realization of artificial cognitive vision systems, focussing on cognitive aspects. These range from the cognitivist symbolic representational paradigm, through connectionist systems and self-organizing dynamical systems, to the enactive cognition paradigm. We then consider various arguments for embodiment, beginning with paradigm-specific cases, and concluding with a paradigm-independent argument for embodied perception and cognition. We explore briefly different forms of embodiment and their relevance to the foregoing viewpoints. We highlight some of the key problems associated with embodied cognitive vision, including the phylogeny/ontogeny trade-off in artificial systems and the developmental limitations imposed by real-time environmental coupling. Finally, we conclude by considering some aspects of natural cognitive systems to see how they can provide insights to help in addressing these problems.

Stability analysis of nonlinear evolution patterns of modulational instability and chaos using one-dimensional Zakharov equations

In the present paper the long-term behavior of the nonlinear dynamical evolution of modulational instability is investigated by using a simplified model for one-dimensional Zakharov equations, which couples the electrostatic electron plasma wave and ion-acoustic wave propagation. The manuscript details on the occurrence of fixed points and fixed-point attractors for a suitable value of the wavenumber of perturbation through associated bifurcations, both for the adiabatic (nonlinear Schrödinger equation) and non-adiabatic cases for Zakharov equations. It is shown that these evolutions are quite sensitive to initial conditions, Fermi–Pasta–Ulam recurrence is broken up and a chaotic state develops for the non-adiabatic case. Regular patterns with a periodic sequence in space and time and spatiotemporal chaos with irregular localized patterns are formed in different regions of unstable wavenumbers, hence producing a self-organizing dynamical system. The results are consistent with those obtained by numerically solving Zakharov equations as previously reported and summarized in the present manuscript.