Dr. Michael Levin explores goals as drivers of expanding intelligence at the 6th Woodenfish conference on Buddhism, Bioengineering and Biological Science.
Category: biological – Page 5
Mindscape 242 | David Krakauer on Complexity, Agency, and Information
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Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/10/242-…formation/
Complexity scientists have been able to make an impressive amount of progress despite the fact that there is not universal agreement about what “complexity” actually is. We know it when we see it, perhaps, but there are a number of aspects to the phenomenon, and different researchers will naturally focus on their favorites. Today’s guest, David Krakauer, is president of the Santa Fe Institute and a longtime researcher in complexity. He points the finger at the concept of agency. A ball rolling down a hill just mindlessly obeys equations of motion, but a complex system gathers information and uses it to adapt. We talk about what that means and how to think about the current state of complexity science.
David Krakauer received his D.Phil. in evolutionary biology from Oxford University. He is currently President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Previously he was at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he was the founding director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and the Co-director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation. He was included in Wired magazine’s list of “50 People Who Will Change the World.”
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Humans and artificial neural networks exhibit some similar patterns during learning
Past psychology and behavioral science studies have identified various ways in which people’s acquisition of new knowledge can be disrupted. One of these, known as interference, occurs when humans are learning new information and this makes it harder for them to correctly recall knowledge that they had acquired earlier.
Interestingly, a similar tendency was also observed in artificial neural networks (ANNs), computational models inspired by biological neurons and the connections between them. In ANNs, interference can manifest as so-called catastrophic forgetting, a process via which models “unlearn” specific skills or information after they are trained on a new task.
In some other instances, knowledge acquired in the past can instead help humans or ANNs to learn how to complete a new task. This phenomenon, known as “transfer,” entails the application of existing knowledge of skills to a novel task or problem.
Key biological marker into why young people self-harm uncovered
As many as one in six teenagers have self-harmed at some point in their lives. As well as being an indicator of emotional pain, self-harm is also the best-known predictor of death by suicide—yet researchers know little about the emotional and biological factors that lead to it.
A new study published in Nature Mental Health, led by Professor Rory O’Connor from the University of Glasgow helps to uncover the biological mechanisms behind why young people self-harm.
Expanding on his research into the psychological factors associated with self-harm, Professor O’Connor’s latest findings reveal that young people with a history of self-harm present a particular biological skin response to electrical activity—a physiological marker associated with difficulties in generating and managing emotions.
Why Do We Have a Consciousness?
What does it mean that we have consciousness — and why does nature care that we do? In a remarkable new convergence of philosophy, psychology, and comparative neuroscience, researchers at Ruhr University Bochum argue that consciousness is not a mysterious luxury, but a powerful evolutionary adaptation.
According to their analysis, conscious experience first emerged as a mechanism of basic arousal — a primordial alarm system to protect living organisms from immediate danger. ([RUB Newsportal][1]) As evolution proceeded, consciousness evolved further: general alertness enabled organisms to filter through overwhelming flows of sensory data, focus selectively, and detect complex correlations — a capacity indispensable for learning, planning, and survival in a dynamic world.
Finally, in some lineages including our own, a third layer arose: reflexive, self-consciousness. This allows us not only to perceive the world, but to perceive ourselves — our bodies, thoughts, sensations — across time. With it comes memory, foresight, self-awareness, and the ability to integrate personal history into projects and social lives.
What is especially striking: these researchers show that consciousness need not depend on a “human-style” cortex. Studies of birds — whose brain architecture is very different from mammals — reveal comparable functional capacities: sensory awareness, integrated information processing, and even rudimentary forms of self-perception. ([RUB Newsportal][1]) This suggests that consciousness, far from being a human special-case, may be a widespread evolutionary solution — one that can arise in diverse biological substrates when the right functional constraints are met.
In this light, consciousness emerges not as an ineffable mystery or a metaphysical afterthought, but as a natural phenomenon with concrete functions: for feeling, for alertness, for learning, for self-representation. Understanding it may not only tell us who we are — but also why it ever made sense for life to become conscious.
Press Release: Ruhr University Bochum
Artificial membranes mimic life-like dynamics through catalytic chemical reactions
Using catalytic chemistry, researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo have achieved dynamic control of artificial membranes, enabling life-like membrane behavior. The work is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
By employing an artificial metalloenzyme that performs a ring-closing metathesis reaction, the team induced the disappearance of phase-separated domains as well as membrane division in artificial membranes, imitating the dynamic behavior of natural biological membranes. This transformative research marks a milestone in synthetic cell technologies, paving the way for innovative therapeutic breakthroughs.