Colloquium: Criticality and dynamical scaling in living systems

Abstract

A celebrated and controversial hypothesis conjectures that some biological systems --parts, aspects, or groups of them-- may extract important functional benefits from operating at the edge of instability, halfway between order and disorder, i.e. in the vicinity of the critical point of a phase transition. Criticality has been argued to provide biological systems with an optimal balance between robustness against perturbations and flexibility to adapt to changing conditions, as well as to confer on them optimal computational capabilities, huge dynamical repertoires, unparalleled sensitivity to stimuli, etc. Criticality, with its concomitant scale invariance, can be conjectured to emerge in living systems as the result of adaptive and evolutionary processes that, for reasons to be fully elucidated, select for it as a template upon which higher layers of complexity can rest. This hypothesis is very suggestive as it proposes that criticality could constitute a general and common organizing strategy in biology stemming from the physics of phase transitions. However, despite its thrilling implications, this is still in its embryonic state as a well-founded theory and, as such, it has elicited some healthy skepticism. From the experimental side, the advent of high-throughput technologies has created new prospects in the exploration of biological systems, and empirical evidence in favor of criticality has proliferated, with examples ranging from endogenous brain activity and gene-expression patterns, to flocks of birds and insect-colony foraging, to name but a few...

To appear in REVIEW OF MODERN PHYSICS

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Cited by in corpus (154)

• Inferring change points in the COVID-19 spreading reveals the effectiveness of interventions
• Non-reciprocal phase transitions
• Logic and connectivity jointly determine criticality in biological gene regulatory networks
• Power-law size distributions in geoscience revisited
• Control of criticality and computation in spiking neuromorphic networks with plasticity
• Between perfectly critical and fully irregular: a reverberating model captures and predicts cortical spike propagation
• Adaptive, locally-linear models of complex dynamics
• Self-organization toward criticality by synaptic plasticity
• Critical Response of a Quantum van der Pol Oscillator
• Searching for collective behavior in a small brain
• Feedback mechanisms for self-organization to the edge of a phase transition
• Edge of chaos and avalanches in neural networks with heavy-tailed synaptic weight distribution
• A review of active matter reviews
• A meta-analysis of Boolean network models reveals design principles of gene regulatory networks
• Hybrid-type synchronization transitions: where marginal coherence, scale-free avalanches, and bistability live together
• Time-series thresholding and the definition of avalanche size
• Critical synchronization dynamics of the Kuramoto model on connectome and small world graphs
• Epidemic plateau in critical SIR dynamics with non-trivial initial conditions
• Collective predator evasion: Putting the criticality hypothesis to the test
• Statistical Criticality arises in Most Informative Representations
• Universality, criticality and complexity of information propagation in social media
• Modular architecture facilitates noise-driven control of synchrony in neuronal networks
• Homeostatic plasticity and emergence of functional networks in a whole-brain model at criticality
• Dynamic Adaptive Computation: Tuning network states to task requirements
• Spontaneous vortex formation by microswimmers with retarded attractions
• Synaptic balance due to homeostatically self-organized quasicritical dynamics
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• Self-organized bistability and its possible relevance for brain dynamics
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• Bifurcation and Criticality
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• Microfluidic cell engineering on high-density microelectrode arrays for assessing structure-function relationships in living neuronal networks
• Criticality in Cell Adhesion
• Quantifying Relevance in Learning and Inference
• A bifurcation integrates information from many noisy ion channels
• Reservoir Computing based on Quenched Chaos
• Heterogeneous excitable systems exhibit Griffiths phases below hybrid phase transitions
• Tailored ensembles of neural networks optimize sensitivity to stimulus statistics
• Minimum Description Length codes are critical
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• Tracking the distance to criticality in systems with unknown noise
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• Heterogeneity extends criticality
• Homeostatic Criticality in Neuronal Networks
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• Networks with many structural scales: a Renormalization Group perspective
• Effects of Turbulent Environment and Random Noise on Self-Organized Critical Behavior: Universality vs Nonuniversality
• Synchronized Attachment and the Darwinian Evolution of Coronaviruses CoV-1 and CoV-2
• Chimera states in neural networks and power systems
• Sampling effects and measurement overlap can bias the inference of neuronal avalanches
• Jensen's force and the statistical mechanics of cortical asynchronous states
• Transition between chaotic and stochastic universality classes of kinetic roughening
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• Effects of turbulent environment on self-organized critical behavior: Isotropy vs Anisotropy
• Stirred Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation with quenched random noise: Emergence of induced nonlinearity
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• Modelling on the very large-scale connectome
• Scale-free behavior of weight distributions of connectomes
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• Renormalization group analysis of a self-organized critical system: Intrinsic anisotropy vs random environment
• Functionality of disorder in muscle mechanics
• Spike-Phase Coupling As an Order Parameter in a Leaky Integrate-and-Fire Model
• Decomposing Thermodynamic Dissipation of Linear Langevin Systems via Oscillatory Modes and Its Application to Neural Dynamics
• Action at a distance in transcriptional regulation
• Dimensional transmutation and nonconventional scaling behaviour in a model of self-organized criticality
• Laser-induced heating for the experimental study of critical Casimir forces with optical trapping
• Biases in Inverse Ising Estimates of Near-Critical Behaviour
• Characterizing spreading dynamics of subsampled systems with non-stationary external input
• When to be critical? Performance and evolvability in different regimes of neural Ising agents
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• Improved estimation for energy dissipation in biochemical oscillations
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• Criticality at work: scaling in the mouse cortex enhances performance
• A generic coupling between internal states and activity leads to activation fronts and criticality in active systems
• The precursor of the critical transitions in majority vote model with the noise feedback from the vote layer
• The dynamical regime and its importance for evolvability, task performance and generalization
• Mechanisms of self-organized quasicriticality in neuronal networks models
• Games in rigged economies
• Emergent phenomena in living systems: a statistical mechanical perspective
• Tipping the Balance: a criticality perspective
• Barrier-Controlled Non-Equilibrium Criticality in Reactive Particle Systems
• Power-law intensity distribution in $\gamma$-decay cascades -- Nuclear Structure as a Scale-Free Random Network
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• Hierarchy of chaotic dynamics in random modular networks
• Scaling in simple continued fraction
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• Optimal reinforcement learning near the edge of synchronization transition
• Online adaptation in robots as biological development provides phenotypic plasticity
• Self-Organized Networks: Darwinian Evolution of Myosin-1
• Functional Geometry of Human Connectome and Robustness of Gender Differences
• Criticality in Tissue Homeostasis: Models and Experiments
• 25 years of criticality in neuroscience -- established results, open controversies, novel concepts
• Avalanches in an excitable network
• Optimal quantum reservoir learning in proximity to universality
• Self-Organized Networks, Darwinian Evolution of Self-Organized Networks, Darwinian Evolution of Dynein Rings, Stalks and Stalk Heads
• Artificial stochastic neural network on the base of double quantum wells
• Defining and finding lifelike entities with a lazy filter
• Brain-like features of MemComputing machines
• Hierarchy of percolation patterns in a kinetic replication model
• Probing the Local Response of Glass-forming Liquids by Laser Excitations
• Estimations by stable motions and applications
• Evolutionary aspects of Reservoir Computing
• Emergence of Chimeras States in One-dimensional Ising model with Long-Range Diffusion
• Multiscale complexity of two-dimensional Ising systems with short-range, ferromagnetic interactions
• Quantifying Influence and Information Transfer in a Modified Vicsek Model with Non-reciprocal Interactions
• Extended Yard Sale model of wealth distribution on Erdős-Rényi random networks
• Maximal Relevance and Optimal Learning Machines