# brain: apropos of mandering minds, the 'default mode' network.

<< When your mind is wandering, your brain’s “default mode” network is active. Its discovery 20 years ago inspired a raft of research into networks of brain regions and how they interact with each other. >>

<< The default mode was one of the first brain networks characterized by science. It consists of a handful of brain regions, including a few at the front of the brain, like the dorsal and ventral medial prefrontal cortices, and others scattered throughout the organ, like the posterior cingulate cortex, the precuneus and the angular gyrus. These regions are associated with memory, experience replay, prediction, action consideration, reward/ punishment and information integration. >> ️

<< The default mode is clearly up to something complicated; it’s involved in many different processes that can’t be neatly described. >>

<< “It’s kind of silly to think that we’re ever going to be like, ‘This one brain region or one brain network does one thing,’” (..). “I don’t think that’s how it works.” (..) “Network interactions are more elucidating to study in some ways than just a network in isolation because they do work together and then come apart and then change what they’re doing over time”. >> Lucina Uddin.️

Lucina Uddin << is particularly interested in how the default mode network interacts with the ️salience network, which seems to help us identify the most relevant piece of information at any given time. Her work suggests that the salience network detects when something is important to pay attention to and then acts as an off switch for the default mode network. >>

Vinod Menon << has developed what he calls️ ️the triple network theory. It posits that abnormal interactions between the default mode network, the salience network and a third one called the frontoparietal network could contribute to mental health disorders. >>️

Nora Bradford. What Your Brain Is Doing When You’re Not Doing Anything.  quantamagazine.org. Feb 5, 2024. 

https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-your-brain-is-doing-when-youre-not-doing-anything-20240205/

FonT: the cat when it is in a contemplative state ... Who knows in what forms and with what results an artificial intelligence (AI) will be able to structure itself in networks of this type.

Also: brain, brain default mode network, in  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=brain+default+mode+network

Also: brain, salience network, in https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=brain+salience+network

Also: brain, triple network theory, in https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=brain+triple+network+theory

Also: brain, ai (artificial intell), analogy,  in https://www.inkgmr.net/kwrds.html

Keywords: brain, mind, default mode network, salience network, triple network theory, AI

# art: nature as a bizarre artist, the self-sculpted Sphinx.

<< There is evidence that the Great Sphinx was a natural landform before its surface features were chiseled by the ancient Egyptians. Is this controversial theory plausible? >>

AA << carried out experiments on the fluid mechanical erosion of clay. Based on accounts of the nonuniform composition of the Sphinx, we tested the effect of hard inclusions within hillocks of softer clay. The flow of a water tunnel mimics the prevailing winds of Giza, and three-dimensional optical scanning records the history and evolution of the shape as it erodes. >>

<< These results show what ancient peoples may have encountered in the deserts of Egypt and why they envisioned a fantastic creature. >>️

️

Samuel Boury, Scott Weady, Leif Ristroph. Sculpting the Sphinx. Phys. Rev. Fluids 8, 110503. Nov 16, 2023.

https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.8.110503

https://gfm.aps.org/meetings/dfd-2022/6323dcaf199e4c2c0873fad7

Also: brain, perception, in https://www.inkgmr.net/kwrds.html 

Keywords: art, sculpt, Sphinx, erosion, fluid mechanical erosion, brain, mind, perceptions.

# brain: how the brain says 'Oops!'

AA << have uncovered how signals from a group of neurons in the brain's frontal lobe simultaneously give humans the flexibility to learn new tasks—and the focus to develop highly specific skills. >>

<< The study's key finding is that the brain uses the same group of neurons for performance feedback in many different situations—whether a person is attempting a new task for the first time or working to perfect a specific skill. >>

<< Part of the magic of the human brain is that it is so flexible, (..) We designed our study to decipher how the brain can generalize and specialize at the same time, both of which are critical for helping us pursue a goal. >> Ueli Rutishauser. ️

️

New Study Reveals How the Brain Says 'Oops!'. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. May 5, 2022. 

https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/new-study-reveals-how-the-brain-says-oops/

AA << recorded the activity of more than 1000 neurons in the medial frontal cortex of human epilepsy patients while they performed complex cognitive tasks. They found that domain-general and domain-specific performance monitoring neurons were intermixed within this brain region. The population activity gave rise to a geometry that allowed domain-general signals to be read out with more than 90% accuracy on single trials while at the same time retaining the ability to separate different conflict conditions. These results show how the human medial frontal cortex resolves the fundamental trade-off between task generalization and specialization, which is critical for cognitive flexibility. >>

️

Zhongzheng Fu, Danielle Beam, et al. The geometry of domain-general performance monitoring in the human medial frontal cortex. Science. Vol 376, Issue 6593. doi: 10.1126/ science.abm9922. May 6, 2022.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm9922

Also

keyword 'cervello' | 'brain' in Notes

(quasi-stochastic poetry)

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=cervello

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=brain

keyword 'brain' in FonT

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=brain

keyword 'organoids' in FonT

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=organoids

PS: An image of "oops", not completely spanned in the air, could be this:

Keywords: brain, mind, cervello, mente, oops

# gst life: apropos of critical points, love (at first sight and love from liking or friendship) might be a second-order phase transition.

<< The hypothesis of the human brain operation in vicinity of a critical point has been a matter of a hot debate in the recent years. >>

<< In this work, (AA) suggest that love might be an example of a second-order phase transition occurring in the brain. (They) show that this hypothesis explains a lot of well-known properties of love. Analyzing several most famous literature examples and a private diary, (they) show that the intensity of feelings exhibits a universal scaling behavior, distinguishing two cases: love at first sight and love developing from liking or friendship (friends first), both being studied in psychology. >>

The theory of second-order phase transitions developed by L.D. Landau (1980) << has inspired a lot of activity in physics, because it turned out that such transitions are characterized by a universal scaling behavior. Independently of the nature of the system, their parameters exhibit power law dependencies on the dimensionless parameter (temperature). >>

<< The key hypothesis of the present work is that love is a second-order phase transition occurring in the human brain under the influence of hormones, such as dopamine and serotonin (..). The brain switches from the normal operation in the critical regime to the supercritical regime because of the increase of the excitation (more dopamine) and reduction of the inhibition (less serotonin) (..). The order parameter of the transition is the intensity of feelings: before the transition, the subject has no particular feelings, while after the transition the feelings are non-zero. The most direct consequence is that the order parameter should exhibit a universal power law behavior: the feelings should grow as a square root of time α ∼√ >>

<< Since it is impossible to analyze the human feelings directly during such uncontrollable phenomenon as ”love at first sight”, (AA) have decided to perform a quantitative study of the intensity of feelings depicted in the literature. (..) (They) have chosen three well-known books for this analysis: ”Romeo and Juliet” (W. Shakespeare), ”The Lily of the Valley” (H. de Balzac, (..)), and ”Martin Eden” (J. London). >>

<< the case of a non-zero external ”bias”, which is a situation that occurs more often than love at first sight. Indeed, one usually knows several persons better than all the others, and thus some positive feelings towards some of them can be present before the transition occurs. (..) To study this transition quantitatively, (AA) have chosen another well-known book, ”Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte. This books is also quite autobiographic, and famous for the psychological details, that got its author the title of ”first historian of the private consciousness”. The delay between the initial acquaintance and love is now of several weeks (about 45 days).

Dmitry Solnyshkov, Guillaume Malpuech. Love might be a second-order phase transition. arXiv: 2203.13246v1 [cond-mat.stat-mech]. Mar 24, 2022. 

https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.13246

Also

keyword 'transition' in FonT: 

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=transition

keyword 'transizione' | 'transition' in Notes (quasi-stochastic poetry): 

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=transizione

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=transition

keywords: gst, life, love, transitions,  critical point, phasetransition, second-order phase transition, brain, mind, behavior.