Borjan (Boki) Milinković

If you were interested in the original paper, but no longer have time for reading or just like videos, I recently gave a talk hosted by the kind and erudite @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, which you can now view on his youtube channel.

Thank you enormously for having me!

@jaanaru.bsky.social

Sounds fascinating, with terrific references. Looking forward to reading 😊

Seems very nice and relevant..

A behind-the-hood metric of synergistic emergence applied to neurodegeneration. Well done @keenandown.bsky.social and team!

A next step would be to apply this to firing rates underlying the fMRI (totally not hinting at a collab) ;-)

Capturing the emergent dynamical structure in biophysical neural models Complex neural systems can display structured emergent dynamics. Capturing this structure remains a significant scientific challenge. Using information theory, we apply Dynamical Independence (DI) to ...

journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Quantifying emergence in neural populations. Great to see this preprint out by Hardik and co!

Very nice results. I love the use of the Izhikevich neuron.

Complements nicely prev. work colleagues and I published on a *different* measure of emergence in biophysical neural models (see next comment)

This has wide reading consequences that break down categorically defined sleep stages, look into the information processing capabilities, and relate them to predictive mechanisms in electrophysiological signals.

Behavioral and brain responses to verbal stimuli reveal transient periods of cognitive integration of the external world during sleep - Nature Neuroscience We typically assume that we lose the ability to react to the outside world when sleeping. Oudiette et al. show that, in most sleep stages, humans can use their facial muscles to respond to spoken word...

Feels like a natural connection, and extension of work done by friends and colleagues here in Paris, Basak Turker Delphine @oudietted.bsky.social, and co..

Delayed, Reduced and Redundant: Information Processing of Prediction Errors during Human Sleep During sleep, the human brain transitions to a ‘sentinel processing mode’, enabling the continued processing of environmental stimuli despite the absence of consciousness. We employed advanced informa...

An absolutely precision-oriented read from the wider team of @canalesjohnson.bsky.social and co. on the information processing of prediction errors--an already high feat. They go further, relating it to environmental stimuli across sleep stages.

This is shaping up to be a great event with top speakers. If you’re interested in the continuity of minds it’s well worth checking out.

www.universite-lyon.fr/nos-domaines...
A Chinese student holding a Master’s degree in cognitive neuroscience and a strong interest in meditation research is eligible to apply for this PhD scholarship at the University of Lyon before February 23, 2026. Details are provided below.

On biological and artificial consciousness: A case for biological computationalism The rapid advances in the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) have galvanised public and scientific debates over whether artificial systems m…

here is the full paper in anyone is interested. Read it or don’t, we’re not the police. 😊🤙

A fun, very Jaan-like, and inspiring discussion about some principles outlined in our most recent paper on #biological #computationalism.

The clear mind of @jaanaru.bsky.social at it for @thetransmitter.bsky.social

This is quite the paper!

Writing is *not* thinking. I've heard the counterargument to this, used recently to save writing from saturated #LLM usage. But, all it does is give more credence to LLM architectures and their instantiation of mind. It is a Chomskyan fallacy to equate #language and #thought. They are not the same.

Our latest preprint on how regional cellular, molecular, and other forms of heterogeneity shape macroscopic wave dynamics is now out:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

For a full thread, see:
x.com/_victorbarne...

New preprint! with @niccolonegro.bsky.social and @liadmudrik.bsky.social
doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ve6c5_v1
Consciousness seems central to moral status debates, from AI to animal welfare.
But is consciousness necessary for moral status? Is it sufficient?
We surveyed >1000 people to find out. 🧵 1/n

Remapping and navigation of an embedding space via error minimization: a fundamental organizational principle of cognition in natural and artificial systems The emerging field of diverse intelligence seeks an integrated view of problem-solving in agents of very different provenance, composition, and substrates. From subcellular chemical networks to swarms...

New preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2601.14096
@chrisfields38.bsky.social
@bhartl.bsky.social
Leo Pio-Lopez
"Remapping and navigation of an embedding space via error minimization: a fundamental organizational principle of cognition in natural and artificial systems"
🧪

The impact of homeostatic inhibitory plasticity in a generative biophysical model A main characteristic of biological systems is their capacity to dynamically adapt to environmental changes. In the brain, synaptic plasticity enables the strengthening or weakening of connections bet...

📄Very happy to share our new pre-print!! 🧠

We introduce a homeostatic inhibitory plasticity rule into the Dynamic Mean Field (DMF) model which stabilizes firing rates and expands the model’s dynamical repertoire—for example, enabling slow-wave activity.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
⬇️⬇️⬇️
1/5

nicee.. and what is an active agent by your definition?

So autonomy -- in your view -- is only closure of some sort. Whilst agency includes some control of the environment, and maybe also -- if i've understood -- some control of oneself too?

What does it mean to be a condition of agency? Would that generalise autonomy, where agency is the special case? If so, what are the additional assumptions or criteria for agency?

What is the difference between autonomy and agency?

The next step worth tackling empirically is to outline the differences between our approach and current systems. Build the formal, operational measure (currently in progress ;-) ), and build the hardware!

So your point is.. right, on, point, @hakwan.bsky.social. :-)

The scale integration across hybrid processes is a strategy through accretion in evolved systems, this is our argument. So it must be utilised by other functions too. However, with consciousness, we get that as a special kind. It is outlined with a little more nuance in *Section 3.4* in our paper...

@hakwan.bsky.social, I didn't see this second post. But, yes you're onto a great point. The diff is that it integrates in a fundamentally *different* manner. And this does dictate as to how digital systems perform language or memory operations, as we have already become privy to...

..that is, it should be marked by integrating across a larger domain of coarse-grained processes. Also, I should say, that on a not-altogether-separate note, I don't think motor control is completely devoid of conscious processing. Consc and motor control are deeply intertwined. 🤗

Wow, @hakwan.bsky.social, big compliment, thanks for the interest!

Great point! I would say that it does apply to motor control as a *general case* of the computations implemented of the kind we mention in the paper. But we hold that consc. is different in the way it integrates across scales..

Thanks @pessoabrain.bsky.social !!

.. so yes, in way it doesn’t match the real behaviour, but precisely because they’re not simulations.

(p.s. thanks for the great questions! Really enjoying formulating an answer and thinking through it!)