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Top Comments: Is Brain Activity a Critical Phenomenon? [1]

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Date: 2023-02-16  

Today, I present a video I found at Quanta Magazine about whether brain activity is an example of a system at or near its critical point. Critical points are associated with dramatic changes that occur when a small change is made to physical conditions. An example that may be familiar is related to phase transitions, that is where the phase of a substance changes, in particular converting liquid to vapor (boiling) or vice versa (condensation). If you look at the relationship between temperature and pressure for the boiling point, you’ll see that as pressure increases, so does the boiling point. If you plot the line for pressure and temperature of the boiling point, you get what is called a coexistence curve, specifying the conditions for these two phases to be in equilibrium. But if you increase the temperature high enough, a point is reached where the distinction between liquid and vapor disappears. The last point where liquid and vapor are in equilibrium is called the critical point, and it consists of a liquid phase full of vapor bubbles, and a vapor phase full of liquid droplets. Increase the temperature above this point, and there is only one phase, called supercritical fluid. Below the critical temperature, there is a certain amount of order—you have the choice between liquid or vapor. Above the critical point, that choice disappears. Other phenomena, such as the magnetization of iron magnets, display similar temperature-dependent behavior.

Starting in the 1960s, and then exploding in the 1980s, a discipline arose called chaos theory, where systems were discovered to have similar behavior in spontaneous transitions between order and disorder on small changes in conditions. Such systems include traffic jams, avalanches, telephone noise, and weather phenomena, among many others. All of these phenomena have critical points separating ordered and disordered behavior.

So can the theory of critical phenomena be applied to the brain?

x YouTube Video

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