Brain complexity born out of criticality

TL;DR

This paper discusses evidence of a second order phase transition in human brain dynamics, emphasizing the importance of criticality for understanding brain function across multiple scales and its implications for connectome and cognitome analysis.

Contribution

It reviews recent findings of criticality in brain dynamics and proposes a unified approach to analyze structural and dynamical complexity across scales.

Findings

Evidence of second order phase transition in brain dynamics

Criticality observed at multiple spatial and temporal scales

Unified analysis techniques for brain complexity

Abstract

In this essay we elaborate on recent evidence demonstrating the presence of a second order phase transition in human brain dynamics and discuss its consequences for theoretical approaches to brain function. We review early evidence of criticality in brain dynamics at different spatial and temporal scales, and we stress how it was necessary to unify concepts and analysis techniques across scales to introduce the adequate order and control parameters which define the transition. A discussion on the relation between structural vs. dynamical complexity exposes future steps to understand the dynamics of the connectome (structure) from which emerges the cognitome (function).