119 citations · 190 across the 18 of their papers we have counts for
19 papers
Statistical Dark Matter: Synergy is everywhere but is hard to capture
Alberto Liardi, Fernando E. Rosas, Daniele Marinazzo +3
The information-theoretic construct of synergy refers to the statistical structure that is contained in three or more variables, but not in any subset of them. Here we leverage rec…
From description to design: Automated engineering of complex systems with desirable emergent properties
Thomas F. Varley, Josh Bongard
The study of complex systems has produced a huge library of different descriptive statistics that scientists can use to describe the various emergent patterns that characterize com…
The many faces of multivariate information
Thomas F. Varley
Extracting higher-order structures from multivariate data has become an area of intensive study in complex systems science, as these multipartite interactions can reveal insights i…
Inferring Mechanisms from Bits: Promises and Pitfalls of Higher-Order Information in Cognitive Science
D. Rebbin, K. J. A. Down, T. F. Varley +2
Higher-order information theory has become a rapidly growing toolkit in computational neuroscience, motivated by the idea that multivariate dependencies can reveal aspects of neura…
The topology of synergy: linking topological and information-theoretic approaches to higher-order interactions in complex systems
Thomas F. Varley, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Alice Patania +1
The study of irreducible higher-order interactions has become a core topic of study in complex systems. Two of the most well-developed frameworks, topological data analysis and mul…
Considering dynamical synergy and integrated information; the unusual case of minimum mutual information
Thomas F. Varley
This brief note considers the problem of estimating temporal synergy and integrated information in dyadic dynamical processes. One of the standard estimators of dynamic synergy is…
A scalable, synergy-first backbone decomposition of higher-order structures in complex systems
Thomas F. Varley
Since its introduction in 2011, the partial information decomposition (PID) has triggered an explosion of interest in the field of multivariate information theory and the study of…
Evolving higher-order synergies reveals a trade-off between stability and information integration capacity in complex systems
Thomas F. Varley, Joshua Bongard
There has recently been an explosion of interest in how "higher-order" structures emerge in complex systems. This "emergent" organization has been found in a variety of natural and…
The serotonergic psychedelic N,N-dipropyltryptamine alters information-processing dynamics in cortical neural circuits
Thomas F. Varley, Daniel Havert, Leandro Fosque +6
Most of the recent work in psychedelic neuroscience has been done using non-invasive neuroimaging, with data recorded from the brains of adult volunteers under the influence of a v…
Generalized Decomposition of Multivariate Information
Thomas F. Varley
Since its introduction, the partial information decomposition (PID) has emerged as a powerful, information-theoretic technique useful for studying the structure of (potentially hig…
Information Theory for Complex Systems Scientists
Thomas F. Varley
In the 21st century, many of the crucial scientific and technical issues facing humanity can be understood as problems associated with understanding, modelling, and ultimately cont…
Partial entropy decomposition reveals higher-order structures in human brain activity
Thomas F Varley, Maria Pope, Maria Grazia Puxeddu +2
The standard approach to modeling the human brain as a complex system is with a network, where the basic unit of interaction is a pairwise link between two brain regions. While pow…
Flickering emergences: The question of locality in information-theoretic approaches to emergence
Thomas F. Varley
"Emergence", the phenomenon where a complex system displays properties, behaviours, or dynamics not trivially reducible to its constituent elements, is one of the defining properti…
Multivariate Information Theory Uncovers Synergistic Subsystems of the Human Cerebral Cortex
Thomas F. Varley, Maria Pope, Joshua Faskowitz +1
One of the most well-established tools for modeling the brain as a complex system is the functional connectivity network, which examines the correlations between pairs of interacti…
Disentangling high-order mechanisms and high-order behaviours in complex systems
Fernando E. Rosas, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Andrea I. Luppi +5
Battiston et al. (arXiv:2110.06023) provide a comprehensive overview of how investigations of complex systems should take into account interactions between more than two elements,…
Decomposing past and future: Integrated information decomposition based on shared probability mass exclusions
Thomas F. Varley
A core feature of complex systems is that the interactions between elements in the present causally constrain each-other as the system evolves through time. To fully model all of t…
Intersectional synergies: untangling irreducible effects of intersecting identities via information decomposition
Thomas F. Varley, Patrick Kaminski
The idea of intersectionality has become a frequent topic of discussion both in academic sociology, as well as among popular movements for social justice such as Black Lives Matter…
Emergence as the conversion of information: A unifying theory
Thomas Varley, Erik Hoel
Is reduction always a good scientific strategy? Does it always lead to a gain in information? The very existence of the special sciences above and beyond physics seems to hint no.…
Causal Emergence in Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems
Thomas F. Varley
Emergence, the phenomena where a system's micro-scale dynamics facilitate the development of non-trivial, informative higher scales, has become a foundational concept in modern sci…