The hierarchically mechanistic mind: A free-energy formulation of the human psyche
This article presents a unifying theory of the embodied, situated human brain called the Hierarchically Mechanistic Mind (HMM). The HMM describes the brain as a complex adaptive system that actively minimises the decay of our sensory and physical states by producing adaptive action-perception cycles via dynamical interactions between hierarchically organised neurocognitive mechanisms. This theory synthesises the free-energy principle (FEP) in neuroscience with an evolutionary systems theory of psychology that explains our brains, minds, and behaviour by appealing to Tinbergen's four questions: adaptation, phylogeny, ontoge...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - January 11, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Redundancy principle and the role of extreme statistics in molecular and cellular biology
Publication date: Available online 11 January 2019Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Z. Schuss, K. Basnayake, D. HolcmanAbstractThe paradigm of chemical activation rates in cellular biology has been shifted from the mean arrival time of a single particle to the mean of the first among many particles to arrive at a small activation site. The activation rate is set by extremely rare events, which are often much different from the mean times between activations and depend on different structural parameters. This shift calls for reconsideration of physical processes used in deterministic and stochastic modeling of chemi...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - January 11, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Network neuroscience for optimizing brain-computer interfaces
Publication date: Available online 8 January 2019Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Fabrizio De Vico Fallani, Danielle S. BassettAbstractHuman-machine interactions are being increasingly explored to create alternative ways of communication and to improve our daily life. Based on a classification of the user's intention from the user's underlying neural activity, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) allow direct interactions with the external environment while bypassing the traditional effector of the musculoskeletal system. Despite the enormous potential of BCIs, there are still a number of challenges that limit their s...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - January 9, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Self-referential basis of undecidable dynamics: from The Liar Paradox and The Halting Problem to The Edge of Chaos
Publication date: Available online 8 January 2019Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Mikhail Prokopenko, Michael Harré, Joseph Lizier, Fabio Boschetti, Pavlos Peppas, Stuart KauffmanAbstractIn this paper we explore several fundamental relations between formal systems, algorithms, and dynamical systems, focussing on the roles of undecidability, universality, diagonalization, and self-reference in each of these computational frameworks. Some of these interconnections are well-known, while some are clarified in this study as a result of a fine-grained comparison between recursive formal systems, Turing machines, and Ce...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - January 9, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Variational ecology and the physics of sentient systems
Publication date: Available online 7 January 2019Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Maxwell J.D. Ramstead, Axel Constant, Paul B. Badcock, Karl J. FristonAbstractThis paper addresses the challenges faced by multiscale formulations of the variational (free energy) approach to dynamics that obtain for large-scale ensembles. We review a framework for modelling complex adaptive control systems for multiscale free energy bounding organism-niche dynamics, thereby integrating the modelling strategies and heuristics of variational neuroethology with a broader perspective on the ecological nestedness of biotic systems. We ex...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - January 8, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Agent-based models of collective intelligence
Publication date: Available online 7 January 2019Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Sandro M. Reia, André C. Amado, José F. FontanariAbstractCollective or group intelligence is manifested in the fact that a team of cooperating agents can solve problems more efficiently than when those agents work in isolation. Although cooperation is, in general, a successful problem solving strategy, it is not clear whether it merely speeds up the time to find the solution, or whether it alters qualitatively the statistical signature of the search for the solution. Here we review and offer insights on two agent-based models of di...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - January 8, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Psychophysical laws as reflection of mental space properties
Publication date: Available online 7 January 2019Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Ihor LubashevskyAbstractThe paper is devoted to the relationship between psychophysics and physics of mind. The basic trends in psychophysics development are briefly discussed with special attention focused on Teghtsoonian's hypotheses. These hypotheses pose the concept of the universality of inner psychophysics and enable us to speak about psychological space as an individual object with its own properties. Turning to the two-component description of human behavior (I. Lubashevsky, Physics of the Human Mind, Springer, 2017) the noti...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - January 8, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research
The representational nature of the body schema: Comment on “Muscleless motor synergies and actions without movements: From motor neuroscience to cognitive robotics” by V. Mohan et al.
Publication date: Available online 7 January 2019Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Radek Ptak (Source: Physics of Life Reviews)
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - January 8, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research
The multidimensional brain
Publication date: Available online 7 January 2019Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Arturo TozziAbstractBrain activity takes place in three spatial-plus time dimensions. This rather obvious claim has been recently questioned by papers that, taking into account the big data outburst and novel available computational tools, are starting to unveil a more intricate state of affairs. Indeed, various brain activities and their correlated mental functions can be assessed in terms of trajectories embedded in phase spaces of dimensions higher than the canonical ones. In this review, I show how further dimensions may not just...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - January 8, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Brain-Mind Operational Architectonics: At the Boundary between Quantum Physics and Eastern Metaphysics
Publication date: Available online 8 January 2019Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Andrew A. Fingelkurts, Alexander A. Fingelkurts, Carlos F.H. Neves, Tarja Kallio-TamminenAbstractThe Operational Architectonics (OA) of brain-mind functioning is a theory that unifies brain and mind through nested and dynamic hierarchy of electromagnetic brain fields. Recently, it has been enriched by concepts from physics like time, space, entropy, and self-organized criticality. This review paper advances OA theory further by delving into the foundations of quantum physics and Eastern metaphysics in relation to mind function. We ai...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - January 8, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Words as social tools: Language, sociality and inner grounding in abstract concepts
Publication date: Available online 6 December 2018Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Anna M. Borghi, Laura Barca, Ferdinand Binkofski, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Giovanni Pezzulo, Luca TummoliniAbstractThe paper introduces a new perspective on abstract concepts (e.g. “freedom”) and their associate words representation, the Words As social Tools (WAT) view. Traditional theories conceptualize language as a way to index referents, a shortcut to access meaning, or a way to access meaning through words associations. WAT goes beyond these theories by identifying additional functions of words and language: words are tool...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - December 7, 2018 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: November 2018Source: Physics of Life Reviews, Volumes 26–27Author(s): (Source: Physics of Life Reviews)
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - November 23, 2018 Category: Physics Source Type: research
The unreasonable effectiveness of small neural ensembles in high-dimensional brain
Publication date: Available online 2 October 2018Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): A.N. Gorban, V.A. Makarov, I.Y. TyukinAbstractComplexity is an indisputable, well-known, and broadly accepted feature of the brain. Despite the apparently obvious and widely-spread consensus on the brain complexity, sprouts of the single neuron revolution emerged in neuroscience in the 1970s. They brought many unexpected discoveries, including grandmother or concept cells and sparse coding of information in the brain.In machine learning for a long time, the famous curse of dimensionality seemed to be an unsolvable problem. Neverthele...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - October 6, 2018 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Advancing research on blood coagulation and thrombosis: Reply to the comments on “Modeling thrombosis in silico: Frontiers, challenges, unresolved problems and milestones”
Publication date: Available online 3 October 2018Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): A.V. Belyaev, J.L. Dunster, J.M. Gibbins, M.A. Panteleev, V. Volpert (Source: Physics of Life Reviews)
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - October 6, 2018 Category: Physics Source Type: research
Prebiotic chemistry and origins of life research with atomistic computer simulations
Publication date: Available online 12 September 2018Source: Physics of Life ReviewsAuthor(s): Andrea Pérez-Villa, Fabio Pietrucci, A. Marco SaittaAbstractResearch in origins of life is an intrinsically multi-disciplinary field, aimed at finding answers to the formidably complex problem of understanding the emergence of life from the modern versions of Charles Darwin's celebrated “primordial soup”. In the last few years, thanks to the increasing computational power and the development of sophisticated theoretical and numerical methods, several computational chemistry and physics groups have invested this field, providi...
Source: Physics of Life Reviews - September 13, 2018 Category: Physics Source Type: research
