Brain activity and cognition: a connection from thermodynamics and information theory
Name
Collell-2015-Brain activity and c.pdf
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668.22 KB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3bdb509d8b8b667bd4b81faa35e8e815
Author(s)
Fauquet, Jordi
Collell Talleda, Guillem
Date Issued
June 2015
Journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Publisher
Frontiers Research Foundation
Citation
Collell, Guillem, and Jordi Fauquet. “Brain Activity and Cognition: a Connection from Thermodynamics and Information Theory.” Front. Psychol. 6 (June 16, 2015).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
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.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00818
