"The human brain is on the edge of chaos
March 20th, 2009 in Medicine & Health /
Modern human brain. Image source: Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Brain Collection.
Cambridge-based researchers provide new evidence that the human brain lives
"on the edge of chaos", at a critical transition point between randomness
and order.
The study, published March 20 in the open-access journal PLoS
Computational Biology, provides experimental data on an idea previously
fraught with theoretical speculation.
Self-organized criticality (where systems spontaneously organize themselves
to operate at a critical point between order and randomness, can emerge from complex
interactions in many different physical systems, including avalanches,
forest fires, earthquakes, and heartbeat rhythms.
According to this study, conducted by a team from the University of
Cambridge, the Medical Research Council Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, and
the GlaxoSmithKline Clinical Unit Cambridge, the dynamics of human brain networks have something important in common with some superficially very different systems in
nature.
Computational networks showing these characteristics have also been
shown to have optimal memory (data storage) and information-processing
capacity.
In particular, critical systems (that are fractal systems) are able to respond very rapidly and extensively to minor changes in their inputs.
"Due to these characteristics, self-organized criticality is intuitively attractive as a model for brain functions such as perception and action, because it would allow us to switch quickly between mental states in order to respond to changing environmental conditions," says co-author Manfred Kitzbichler.
The researchers used state-of-the-
Their results suggest that the brain operates in a self-organized critical state.
To support this conclusion, they also investigated the synchronization of activity in
computational models, and demonstrated that the dynamic profile they had found in the brain was exactly reflected in the models. Collectively, these results amount to strong evidence in favour of the idea that human brain dynamics exist at a critical point on the edge of chaos
According to Kitzbichler, this new evidence is only a starting point. "A natural next question we plan to address in future research will be: How do measures of critical dynamics relate to cognitive performance or neuropsychiatric disorders and their treatments?"
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More information: Kitzbichler MG, Smith ML, Christensen SR, Bullmore E
(2009) Broadband Criticality of Human Brain Network Synchronization. PLoS
Comput Biol 5(3): e1000314. doi:10.1371/
Importantíssima esta constatação agora reportada nesse journal científico. Esse trabalho confirma coisas básicas e fundamentais para que nosso cérebro funcione como funciona. Estando todo o processo mental "na beira do caos" quer dizer que existe uma inerente incerteza - pois o caos gera isso - uma incerteza no desenvolvimento dos sistemas no ambito da fisica classica. Essa incerteza gera a fractalidade dos sistemas.
Tenho estudos feitos que mostram a seguinte relação:
Mecânica Quantica leva à decoerencia - a Mente viva no sentido quantico (de Copenhagen/Von Neumann) gera o colapso como caos - que gera a fractalidade na natureza.
Esses resultados são mais uma indicação que na natureza - como em nossos cérebros - os processos são fractais e não "normais" ou gaussianos.A coisa é complexa mesmo - desculpem.
Obrigada.
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