Event:

Statistical physics studies the emergent, large-scale behaviour of systems composed of a great many small-scale parts, and as such, it presents a natural framework for understanding how the brain’s billions of neurons come together to shape a single human-scale consciousness. Statistical physical concepts of critical phase transitions and energy landscapes have been proposed to underlie changes in consciousness under the effects of psychoactive substances such as psychedelics, or to underlie pathological states such as schizophrenia, but to date, these characterizations have lacked a formal connection. I propose that an elegant connection exists within a simple and well-studied model from statistical physics known as a spin glass. Briefly, the spin-glass model contains two distinct and orthogonal critical phase transitions, and crucially, the distance to each transition is intimately tied to global changes in the model’s inherent energy landscape over states, such as its flattening or steepening. In this talk, I will provide an overview of brain criticality research to date, and will present my recent results applying the spin-glass model to electrophysiological (M/EEG) recordings of (i) schizophrenia patients and controls, and of (ii) neurotypical individuals under the influence of psychedelic or non-psychedelic drugs.

Join the Research Seminar online:

https://tum-conf.zoom.us/j/66486345358
Meeting ID: 664 8634 5358
Passcode: 170230

We are looking forward to a great discussion.

See full programme: https://franziskaknolle.com/journal-club-tumnic/