On critical State Transitions between different levels in Neural Systems

TL;DR

This paper proposes that the hierarchical organization of neural systems can be understood through Critical State Transitions, where each level's emergence involves scale changes, new descriptions, and properties, with implications for cognition and consciousness.

Contribution

It introduces a framework applying Critical State Transitions to neural hierarchies, offering a new perspective on how higher levels emerge from lower ones.

Findings

Neural state transitions involve scale and description changes.

Higher levels of neural organization emerge via state transitions.

Discussion of neural correlates of cognition and consciousness.

Abstract

The framework of Modern Theory of Critical State Transitions considers the relation between different levels of organization in complex systems in terms of Critical State Transitions. A State Transition between levels entails changes of scale of observables and, concurrently, new formats of description at reduced dimensionality. It is here suggested that this principle can be applied to the hierarchic structure of the Nervous system, whereby the relations between different levels of its functional organization can be viewed as successions of State Transitions. Upon State Transition, the lower level presents to the higher level an abstraction of itself, at reduced dimensionality and at a coarser scale. The re-scaling in the State Transitions is associated with new objects of description, displays new properties and obeys new laws, commensurate to the new scale. To illustrate this process, some aspects of the neural events thought to be associated with Cognition and Consciousness are discussed. However, the intent is here also more general in that State Transitions between all levels of organization are proposed as the mechanisms by which successively higher levels of organization emerge from lower levels.