[Todos] Coloquios del Departamento de Física (jueves 2/6)

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                       COLOQUIOS DEL DEPARTAMENTO DE FÍSICA FCEyN - UBA

                                 http://coloquios.df.uba.ar/

                                  Charla, café y galletitas
                          En el Aula Federman, 1er piso, Pabellón I,
                                    Ciudad Universitaria


                                  Jueves 2 de junio, 14hs,

                       Criticality in brain's physics and mind dynamics


                                       Dante Chialvo

                          CONICET - Universidad Nacional de Rosario



It is well known that dynamical systems posed near a second order  
phase transition generate a bewildering variety of flexible behavior,  
associated with the abundance of metastable states at the critical  
point. This universal feature led us to argue, since the last  
millennium, that the most fundamental cognitive properties of the  
functioning brain are only possible because it is spontaneously  
located at the border of such instability. We review the motivation  
and then describe recent experimental results, both in health and  
disease, at various brain scales ranging from a few millimeters up to  
the entire cortex. Finally we will discuss which aspects of the mind  
dynamics can be usefully explained in terms of critical phenomena, as  
well as the lesson and implications for building emerging intelligent  
devices.