The Critical Brain Hypothesis? Meet The Metastable Brain~Mind

TL;DR

This paper challenges the critical brain hypothesis by proposing that the brain operates in a metastable state, allowing for simultaneous integration and segregation of neural tendencies, thus enabling complex functional information processing.

Contribution

It introduces the metastable brain hypothesis, emphasizing the brain's operation in a state of coexistence of tendencies rather than near a critical point.

Findings

Brain exhibits metastability with coexisting tendencies.

The metastable state supports complex information creation.

Contrasts with the critical brain hypothesis.

Abstract

In contrast to the critical brain hypothesis in which the brain tunes itself to a critical point between $states$ of chaos and order, analysis of Coordination Dynamics suggests that a vast repertoire of $coexisting$ $tendencies$ exists for regions of the brain to integrate and segregate at the same time. Rather than teetering between order and randomness, the brain~mind lives in an immense sea of metastability where it can create functional information.