
Rat brains provide even more evidence our brains operate near tipping point - dkoston
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/does-the-human-brain-teeter-on-the-edge-of-chaos-rat-brains-point-to-yes/
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ssivark
Ha, interesting timing! This has been my personal research topic this week,
and I've been digging through the literature trying to get a sense of how
thorough these experimental results are, and the theoretical underpinnings of
neuronal criticality.

Here's a very nice (slightly dated, 2012) review of the subject [1]. With it's
conversational tone, it's quite a breezy read, even for non-experts. For those
who are jaded of power laws and criticality being bandied about willy-nilly,
this article nicely digs a little deeper.

1:
[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2012.0016...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2012.00163/full)

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astazangasta
This seems like hooey to me. I mean power laws are everywhere, not just in
phase transitions, and they seem to be struggling to identify what the
"phases" are in the brain that the "power law" they claim to be observing
result from. Post-hoc reasoning if ever.

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aitchnyu
Makes me nostalgic when I discovered a trove of chaos/complexity books in the
college library, apparently the most represented topic in the science shelves
as of 2008. Knowledgeable idiot warning. I was impressed about human brains
existing at the edge of chaos. It does not go over one edge, its a system that
has the opposite property of the butterfly effect: its state is buffered
against impressions and strong impressions may move it to another stable
state. Over the other edge: a normal brain plots as chaotic brainwaves while
an epileptic plots as regular phases.

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dkoston
It would seem logical that this is more of “our brains can get overloaded and
must shed the extra chaos” than we operate near a specific tipping point all
the time. In a system that expends energy to do its job, a well designed
system would try to regulate energy usage by optimizing on-the-fly and
discarding activities using too much energy or energy in an inefficient way.

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rafaelvasco
My vision on this: The thing is we can't say our brains operate at tipping
point since we don't understand the brain fully yet. And won't for a long
time. We haven't realized the full capacity of the brain yet, far from it. So,
no, it most likely doesn't operate at tipping point for the majority of
people.

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tilt_error
Why should we care what you believe to be true, when you don’t provide
empirical backup and no scientific method? This is less than interesting - it
dilutes the discussions around the matter at hand.

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jMyles
1) This comment is unnecessarily mean. 2) The comment is about the limits of
our understanding and how they affect our outlook, so your criticism about not
providing "empirical backup and no scientific method" are a non sequitur.

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BuckRogers
It doesn't read as mean to me, it's just the truth. The OP made a claim, "So,
no, it most likely doesn't operate at tipping point for the majority of
people." and failed to back it up with any evidence. In fact, his premise is
that this is "his vision".

Tilt_error was so logically correct in his statement, that I appreciated
reading it. Clear thinking helps everyone.

