The thermodynamics of cognition: A Mathematical Treatment (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Thermodynamic Brain and the Evolution of Intellect: The Role of Mental Energy.
Cognitive Neurodynamics, 2020
The living state is low entropy, highly complex organization, yet it is part of the energy cycle of the environment. Due to the recurring presence of the resting state, stimulus and its response form a thermodynamic cycle of perception that can be modeled by the Carnot engine. The endothermic reversed Carnot engine relies on energy from the environment to increase entropy (i.e., the synaptic complexity of the resting state). High entropy relies on mental energy, which represents intrinsic motivation and focuses on the future. It increases freedom of action. The Carnot engine can model exothermic, negative emotional states, which direct the focus on the past. The organism dumps entropy and energy to its environment, in the form of aggravation, anxiety, criticism, and physical violence. The loss of mental energy curtails freedom of action, forming apathy, depression, mental diseases, and immune problems. Our improving intuition about the brain's intelligent computations will allow the development of new treatments for mental disease and novel find applications in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).
Adaptation of the generalized Carnot cycle to describe thermodynamics of cerebral cortex
The brain is a thermodynamic system operating far from equilibrium. Its function is to extract microscopic sensory information from the volleys of action potentials (pulses) that are delivered by immense arrays of sensory receptors, construct the macroscopic meaning of the information, and store, retrieve, and update that meaning by incorporating it into its knowledge base. The function is executed repetitively in the action-perception-assimilation cycle. Each cycle commences by a phase transition, in which the immense population comprising each sensory cortex condenses from a gas-like state to a liquid-like state. It ends with return of the cortex to the expectant gas-like state. We have modeled the microscopic thermodynamics of the cycle using quantum field theory. Our new result is modeling cortical macroscopic thermodynamics with the generalized Carnot cycle, in which the energy required for the construction of knowledge is supplied by brain metabolism and is dissipated as heat ...
The Mental Maxwell Relations: A Thermodynamic Allegory for Higher Brain Functions
Frontiers in Neuroscience
The theoretical framework of classical thermodynamics unifies vastly diverse natural phenomena and captures once-elusive effects in concrete terms. Neuroscience confronts equally varied, equally ineffable phenomena in the mental realm, but has yet to unite or to apprehend them rigorously, perhaps due to an insufficient theoretical framework. The terms for mental phenomena, the mental variables, typically used in neuroscience are overly numerous and imprecise. Unlike in thermodynamics or other branches of physics, in neuroscience, there are no core mental variables from which all others formally derive and it is unclear which variables are distinct and which overlap. This may be due to the nature of mental variables themselves. Unlike the variables of physics, perhaps they cannot be interpreted as composites of a small number of axioms. However, it is well worth exploring if they can, as that would allow more parsimonious theories of higher brain function. Here we offer a theoretical...
The evolution of brain and mind: a non-equilibrium thermodynamics approach
Ludus Vitalis Revista De Filosofia De Las Ciencias De La Vida Journal of Philosophy of Life Sciences Revue De Philosophie Des Sciences De La Vie, 2007
The evolution of human brain and mind presupposes the study of the evolution of organic life-forms and the study of the phylogeny of preconscious animal cognition. Thus this paper takes as its basis the framework of non-equilibrium thermodynamics for biological systems. According to this viewpoint, biological systems seem to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics: organisms keep themselves alive in their highly organized states because they absorb energy from the environment and process it to produce a state of low entropy within themselves. So it can be said that biological systems are feed of or attract negative entropy in order to compensate for the increase of entropy they create when living (i.e., life is negentropic). The paper then traces the phylogeny of brain and mind from the complexity of negentropic processes in biological systems (metabolism, thermo-regulation, irritability, sensation, perception) to non-human animal mind and human consciousness.
Brain Resting State, Landauer Principle and Carnot Cycle
viXra, 2017
The brain displays a low-frequency ground energy conformation, called the resting state, which is characterized by energy/information balance via self-regulatory mechanisms. Despite the high-frequency evoked activity accumulates information from the detail-oriented sensory processing of environmental data, nevertheless the brain’s automatic regulation is always able to recover the resting state. Indeed, we show that the two energetic processes are complementary and symmetric: while activation decreases temporal dimensionality via transient bifurcations, the ensuing brain’s response leads to procedures that satisfy the Landauer’s principle. Landauer’s principle, which states that information erasure requires energy, predicts heat accumulation in the system: this means that information accumulation is correlated with increases in temperature and with actions that recover the resting state. We explain how brain synaptic networks frame a closed system, similar to the Carnot cycle, where...
The temporal and affective structure of living systems: A thermodynamic perspective
Adaptive Behavior, 2023
Enactive approaches to cognitive science as well as contemporary accounts from neuroscience have argued that we need to reconceptualize the role of temporality and affectivity in minds. Far from being limited to special faculties, such as emotional mental states and timekeeping, these accounts argue that time and affect both constitute fundamental aspects of minds and cognition. If this is true, how should one conceptualize the relation between these two fundamental aspects? This paper offers a way to conceptualize and clarify the relation between temporality and affectivity when understood in this fundamental sense. In particular, the paper contributes to ongoing discussions of structural temporality and affectivity by combining enactive notions of self-maintenance with a thermodynamically informed view of the organization of living systems. In situating temporality and affectivity by way of their role for the maintenance of thermodynamic non-equilibrium, I will argue that temporality and affectivity should be regarded as two sides of the same coin—that is, two distinct ways of highlighting one and the same process. This process corresponds to the continued differentiation of organism and environment as functional poles of a living system. The temporal and affective structure of living systems may thus be seen as the warp and weft by which living systems maintain themselves in terms of thermodynamic non-equilibrium.
Brain activity and cognition: a connection from thermodynamics and information theory
Frontiers in Psychology, 2015
The connection between brain and mind is an important scientific and philosophical question that we are still far from completely understanding. A crucial point to our work is noticing that thermodynamics provides a convenient framework to model brain activity, whereas cognition can be modeled in information-theoretical terms. In fact, several models have been proposed so far from both approaches. A second critical remark is the existence of deep theoretical connections between thermodynamics and information theory. In fact, some well-known authors claim that the laws of thermodynamics are nothing but principles in information theory. Unlike in physics or chemistry, a formalization of the relationship between information and energy is currently lacking in neuroscience. In this paper we propose a framework to connect physical brain and cognitive models by means of the theoretical connections between information theory and thermodynamics. Ultimately, this article aims at providing further insight on the formal relationship between cognition and neural activity.
2015
— The brain is both a thermodynamic system and an information processor. Cognition is described well in terms of information-based models and brain activity as a physical process, is accurately addressed via a thermodynamic approach. A connection between information theory and thermodynamics in neuroscience is currently lacking in the literature. The aim of this paper is to propose an integrative approach regarding information and energy as two related magnitudes in the brain, and to discuss the main connections between information theory and thermodynamics that may be helpful for understanding brain activity. In this sense, the link between both approaches is based on the concepts of entropy and negentropy, the Boltzmann formula, the Landauer’s Principle and the energetic cost for the observation of information proved by Szilard. This set of connections enables us to show that information and energy are two strongly related and interchangeable magnitudes in the brain with the possi...
Thoughts about Thinking: Cognition According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Advanced Studies in Biology, 2013
A holistic account of the human brain is provided by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. According to this universal precept, the central nervous system is governed by the quest to consume free energy in the least possible time. The brain is like any other system of nature that has evolved over eons and continues to develop over an individual's life time. This physical portrayal is singularly appropriate because power-law characteristics as well as oscillatory and at times unpredictable functioning are not exclusive attributes of the brain but are found in other systems throughout nature. The neural network comprises pathways for signal propagation just as other natural systems have pathways for the transmission of energy in various forms. These universalities support the view of the evolution and development of the human brain as a natural thermodynamic process. In a like manner perception, sensation and learning as well as the processes of memory, emotions and consciousness can be regarded as natural expressions of the neural network under the suzerainty of the Second Law. The outcomes of cognitive processes, like other natural processes, are non-deterministic because the interactive effects of flows of energy as signals with differences in energy as their driving forces cannot be separated from each other. This naturalistic framework also provides insight into mental disorders and cognitive defects. *arto.annila@helsinki.fi *cbeck@ualberta.ca 136 S. Varpula, A. Annila and C. Beck