Borjan (Boki) Milinković

Seeing the Mind, Educating the Brain

If you are in Paris on October 1-3 : we are organizing a fantastic cognitive neuroscience conference at Collège de France, on topics ranging from language to math, education and consciousness, with many of my favorite scientists !
Full program here:
www.unicog.org/seeing-the-m...

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This caution, to me, includes measures of emergence and my own work, as well. They are, like all complexity measures not exempt from it. So maybe, like what I find in my results--that more emergence doesn't equate to more consciousness: same for complexity.

Very happy to discuss all of this more!

To add, I don't even know if I believe that 'higher' consciousness is actually a thing.

A rule I live by is that: conscious of more *does not equal* more conscious.

It has helped me on my path thus far. 😅

I do agree however that measures of LZ for example do peak with randomness (though there is a really cool old paper showing that this might not be the case, if I find it I will link it here). Measures are only as good as their utility, so one should always be cautious with what we infer from them.

Lenore! Thanks so much! I'm glad you find this interesting, it a pleasure to hear that from someone like you. As a general short answer, no, I think it is important to disambiguate emergence measures and measures of neural complexity, or algorithmic complexity (signal diversity).

@thomasandrillon.bsky.social puts it brilliantly here. Maybe indeed, less, rather than more, is more.

The pleasure remains mine. 🤗

I'm not sure what you mean, but please feel free. 🤗

Don't walk in front of me, for I may not follow.

Don't want behind me, for I may not lead.

Walk beside me, and be my friend.

A.C.

17/n

Without @anilseth.bsky.social , @thomasandrillon.bsky.social , Lionel Barnett, and Olivia Carter, this work is not possible.

So, as a little emotional ending to this thread I'd like to paraphrase someone much wiser than I..

16/n

This was an incredible journey, with, for me, far-reaching implications.

But none of it would’ve been possible without the colleagues and friends who helped challenge, constrain, and co-create the science.

Science remains a collective pursuit.

15/n

There is much more in the paper, that you'll just have to go and look at yourself. ;-)

14b /n

While #computers enforce clean separations—#hardware vs. #software, #micro vs. #macro—the brain doesn’t play along. Wakeful minds #entangle #scales. #Consciousness emerges *not* from separation, but from entwined, and #scale-#integrated dynamics.

14/n

It also tapped into a deeper theme: #Biological #brains break the rules we use to design #artificial #systems!

And maybe that’s the point.

13/n

It gave us a #new #perspective on #neurophys #data and the relation to conscious states. Hopefully with some insight into how neural dynamics, across scales, relate to up-keeping wakeful states. And in turn, how a specific type of #fragmentation occurs under anaesthesia.
12/n

Anaesthetic-induced unresponsiveness, by contrast, breaks this vertical tether: macroscopic dynamics proliferate and become fragmented, producing an explosion of the number of closed macros discovered on each scale that never consolidate into structured and dominant dynamics

11/n

I realised that this paradox dissolves if we recognise that conscious experience depends on integration across spatiotemp. scales of brain activity. Here, the wakeful brain sits at a sweet-spot where macroscopic dynamics remain tightly interwoven with their micro-level

10/n

Our results flipped the script on the old intuition that more emergence means more consciousness.

And just like that (light bulb moment 💡)

9/n

Contrasting this with #wake, and to a lesser extent the #dream-like #ketamine anaesthetic state, which display *lower* overall emergence but a far more structured emergence landscape!

It was crazy wild! But it took time to grasp the deeper insight behind it.

8/n

Getting into the nitty gritty, we found drug specific effects. First, propofol and xenon both *elevate* emergence while fragmenting the emergent landscape across the #multiscale #heterarchy.

7/n

The results overturn an intuitive assumption that richer #consciousness should coincide with greater #emergence. Instead, we show that loss of consc. is characterised by higher emergence (meaning stronger cross-scale decoupling) yet the emergent landscape becomes fragmented

6/n

We applied DI to source-reconstructed EEG recorded while participants were awake and while consciousness was suppressed by propofol, xenon or ketamine.

What we found was confronting, exciting, and completely reshaped how I think about emergence in the brain.

5/n

Simply: how do different anaesthetic agents reshape the #dynamical #landscape of neural activity across emergent, macroscopic scales?

We finally had a way to measure it. So, why not be bold enough to test some of our deepest intuitions?

4/n

Enter: #Dynamical #Closure.
What I was really after was how closed macroscopic scales are from their micro-level generators.

And, how this closure might relate to neural dynamics underlying conscious states, and if it is modulated during unresponsiveness.

3/n

The starting intuition is that measures of #emergence shouldn’t just quantify how much emergence there is, but also reveal how the resulting emergent #dynamical #landscape is structured and organised.

The real challenge? Figuring out how to do this across scales.

2/n

Dynamical independence reveals anaesthetic specific fragmentation of emergent structure in neural dynamics Conscious experience depends on the coordinated activity of neural processes that span multiple scales--from synapses to whole-brain dynamics. A recently introduced measure, dynamical independence, id...

📜🪇[PUBLISHED]: NEW PREPRINT!🪇📜

I am incredibly excited to announce that we have published our paper on how "Dynamical independence reveals anaesthetic specific fragmentation of emergent structure in neural dynamics"
w@thomasandrillon.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social Barnett, Carter

Strap in!
1/n

Was a pleasure to present!! 🎉🤓

1/ Today at @assc28.bsky.social from the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science and friends: 9:50am, Kalokainouri Hall, @neuromorphicboki.bsky.social "Unfolding Sleep’s Emergent Dynamical Organisation in the Temporal and Spectral Domains"

Today, on our closing day, we begin with the cohesive and clear work of Carmen Miguel. Here she is providing us with a model of chasing movement of pairs of fish. Going beyond just toy examples of collective dynamics!