Statistical mechanical foundation of Weber-Fechner laws

Abstract

Even though the phenomenological relations between perception and stimulus have been firmly established, a theoretical argument for Weber's and Fechner's law in terms of relevant models or from statistical physics is largely missing. We present such a discussion in terms of response theory for nonequilibrium systems, where the induced displacement or current, which stands for the perceived stimulus, crucially depends on the change in time-symmetric reactivities. Stationary nonequilibria may indeed generate extra currents by changing the dynamical activity. The argument finishes by understanding how the extra dynamical activity logarithmically encodes the actual stimulus.

References in corpus (14)

• Fluctuations and response of nonequilibrium states
• The statistical physics of active matter: from self-catalytic colloids to living cells
• Thermodynamic costs of information processing in sensory adaption
• Frenesy: time-symmetric dynamical activity in nonequilibria
• Nonequilibrium linear response for Markov dynamics, I: jump processes and overdamped diffusions
• Response theory: a trajectory-based approach
• Time-symmetric fluctuations in nonequilibrium systems
• The frenetic origin of negative differential response
• Negative differential response in chemical reactions
• Nonequilibrium Response and Frenesy
• Sensory Organ like Response of Zigzag Edge Graphene Nanoribbons
• Logarithmic distributions prove that intrinsic learning is Hebbian
• Sensory organ like response determines the magnetism of zigzag-edged honeycomb nanoribbons
• Nonequilibrium corrections to gradient flow