BI 212 John Beggs: Why Brains Seek the Edge of Chaos

John Beggs on criticality in brains.

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ou may have heard of the critical brain hypothesis. It goes something like this: brain activity operates near a dynamical regime called criticality, poised at the sweet spot between too much order and too much chaos, and this is a good thing because systems at criticality are optimized for computing, they maximize information transfer, they maximize the time range over which they operate, and a handful of other good properties. John Beggs has been studying criticality in brains for over 20 years now. His 2003 paper with Deitmar Plenz is one of of the first if not the first to show networks of neurons operating near criticality, and it gets cited in almost every criticality paper I read. John runs the Beggs Lab at Indiana University Bloomington, and a few years ago he literally wrote the book on criticality, called The Cortex and the Critical Point: Understanding the Power of Emergence, which I highly recommend as an excellent introduction to the topic, and he continues to work on criticality these days.
On this episode we discuss what criticality is, why and how brains might strive for it, the past and present of how to measure it and why there isn't a consensus on how to measure it, what it means that criticality appears in so many natural systems outside of brains yet we want to say it's a special property of brains. These days John spends plenty of effort defending the criticality hypothesis from critics, so we discuss that, and much more. You'll hear John is super scholarly about the subject, even when asked about topics outside his main wheelhouse, so there are lots of links to papers he mentions in the show notes.

0:00 - Intro
4:28 - What is criticality?
10:19 - Why is criticality special in brains?
15:34 - Measuring criticality
24:28 - Dynamic range and criticality
28:28 - Criticisms of criticality
31:43 - Current state of critical brain hypothesis
33:34 - Causality and criticality
36:39 - Criticality as a homeostatic set point
38:49 - Is criticality necessary for life?
50:15 - Shooting for criticality far from thermodynamic equilibrium
52:45 - Quasi- and near-criticality
55:03 - Cortex vs. whole brain
58:50 - Structural criticality through development
1:01:09 - Criticality in AI
1:03:56 - Most pressing criticisms of criticality
1:10:08 - Gradients of criticality
1:22:30 - Homeostasis vs. criticality
1:29:57 - Minds and criticality