ABSTRACT: A NEW INVESTIGATION proposes a unified theory of brain function based on criticality, a state where the brain wobbles between order and chaos, which allows you to learn, adapt and process information optimally. When the brain deviates from this delicate balance, cognitive performance weakens and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s can begin to establish themselves.
The researchers showed that the accumulation of Tau proteins in Alzheimer’s interrupts criticality, while the dream seems to restore it, offering possible new therapeutic paths. With tools such as FMRI, this theory can lead to previous diagnoses and personalized interventions to maintain or restore brain function.
Key facts:
The defined criticism: the brain works best at an almost quotic turning point known as criticism, essential for learning and cognition. Alzheimer’s link: Alzheimer’s can degrade cognition by interrupting the ability of the brain to maintain criticism, not just kill neurons. Diense: the dream restores the criticism of the brain, which suggests new ways of preventing or decreasing neurodos.
Source: Wustl
In a new article with implications to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders, Keith Hangen, associate professor of Biology in Arts and Sciences of the University of Washington in St. Louis, suggests a new comprehensive approach to understand how the brain and the rules it must follow to achieve optimal performance works.
“There is a common perception that the human brain is the most complicated thing in the universe,” Hangen said.
“The brain is immensely powerful, but that power can arise from a relatively simple set of mathematical principles.”
HENGEN begins with the premise that almost everything our brain does is learned or powerful by experience. In other words, we are not born with preprogrammed wiring circuits to help us read, drive cars or do anything else we do every day. A healthy brain must be ready to learn anything and everything.
But what is a collection of neurons capable of learning? HENGEN suggests that brains become learning machines only when they reach a special state called “criticality.”
A concept taken from physics, criticism describes a complex system that is in the turning point between order and chaos. On this edge of the shave, the brains are prepared to obtain new information, said Hangen. “Brains should achieve criticism to think, remember and learn.”
Hangen proposed criticality as a unifying theory of brain function and disease in the prestigious Neuron magazine.
Woodrow Shew, a physicist from the University of Arkansas, is the co -author.
A biologist and a physique may seem strange pairing, but the new unifying theory combines both areas of science. Physicists often describe criticality using the classic example of a pile of sand: as sand is added, the pile will grow more and more steep until eventually avalanche. Just before that final grain triggered a moment of chaos, the battery was at a critical angle, one step away from instability.
Shew explained that physicists first developed a deep understanding of criticality as a way of describing magnets and other materials. Around the change of the 21st century, these ideas were expanded to explain a broader range of complex systems, including avalanches, earthquakes and, ultimately, living systems and the brain.
A defining aspect of critical systems is that they look the same on any scale: a pile of sand on the edge of an avalanche has the same slope if the battery is small or mountainous. In the brain, criticism is constant if measured in a handful of neurons or an entire region. Similarly, brain patterns that develop over time are surprisingly similar when considered in milliseconds or hours.
“This coincides with our intuitive understanding of how brains operates,” Hangen said.
“Our internal experiences cover milliseconds to months. They do not have a scale.”
Hangen and Shew suggest that criticality is not just a theoretical concept; It is a state that can be measured and calculated with precision through FMRI brain image technology.
“Criticality is the optimal computational state of the brain,” Hangen said.
“We have developed a mathematical way of measuring how close the brain is to criticality, which should help us get the fundamental questions about how a human brain works.”
A new understanding of the disease
The criticality framework offers a new perspective to understand neurological disease. Instead of focusing on specific damaged brain regions or accumulated proteins, Hangen argues that diseases such as Alzheimer destroy something more basic: brain ability to maintain criticism.
“Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases not only damage neurons, but they break the general capacity of the brain to calculate the criticality slowly,” Hangen explained.
“As a brain moves more and further from criticality, it loses the ability to adapt and process information effectively.”
This framework explains a disconcerting feature of brain diseases: patients often seem completely normal until they have lost many neurons.
“The brain has notable compensatory skills that can mask functional problems, even when criticality begins to erode,” Hangen said.
“Traditional evaluations lose the early stages because they focus on the established final points that the brain tries to maintain through solutions.”
As criticism gradually deteriorates, the brain works harder to achieve the same cognitive results, Hangen said.
“It is like an engine that still works but requires more fuel and generates more heat. For the moment we notice memory problems or other symptoms, criticism has probably been compromised for years.”
Hangen’s collaboration with David M. Holtzman, MD, Barbara Burton and Reuben M. Morriss III distinguished professor at Washu Medicine, has revealed that the accumulation of Tau proteins in Alzheimer’s directly interrupts criticality, providing a clear link between the molecular distressing of the disease and cognitive collapse.
This connection between criticality and Alzheimer’s opens the exciting possibilities of diagnosis. In theory, a simple FMRI could help detect decompositions in criticality years before symptoms appear.
“In combination with avant -garde blood analysis, we could identify people at risk and intervene before irreversible damage occurs,” Hangen said.
In another collaboration, Hangen has associated with Deanna Barc, Gregory B. Couch psychiatry professor in Washu Medicine and professor of psychological and brain sciences in the arts and sciences, for an observational study to see how criticism at birth determines cognitive development and childhood skills.
“From the beginning, some children are closer to criticality than others, which, based on our theory, suggests that they will be better students,” said Hangen.
“Many external factors can affect their success in school, but criticality can explain an impressive amount of variability among children.”
The connection of the sleep mind
In early 2024, Hangen and Co -author Ralf Wessel, professor of Physics and Sciences of Washu, used the concept of criticality to visit an old question again: why do we need to sleep? When tracking brain activity for several weeks, they discovered that the dream restores a state of criticality.
“Being awake and active away from criticality, and sleeping is like a restart button,” Hangen explained.
That idea could help researchers unlock the power of sleep as a therapy for Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases that move away the brain of their optimal state.
Previous studies of Holtzman and others have found that people who do not sleep, perhaps due to shift work or chronic insomnia, have a much higher risk for Alzheimer’s as they age. And there is already some evidence that sleep interventions can help delay the progression of Alzheimer’s symptoms.
HENGEN believes that intensive and intensive sleep -based therapy could help restore criticism and improve learning and memory in people with brain disease. Mouse studies conducted by Holtzman and James McGregor, a postdoctoral researcher in the Hangen laboratory, offer a vision of the possibilities: the mice were raised specifically so that Alzheimer’s symptoms become faster students after a directed sleep intervention reinforces criticism.
Critical future
There is a lot of work to do, but HENGEN eventually would like to understand how criticality helps explain the complex characteristics of human neurobiology.
“We can find that someone who is an incredible artist, for example, could be very close to criticality in parts of the brain involved in creative ideation,” he said.
It is also possible that a look close to criticism can point to non -discovered trends or talents that only need a way out.
“Maybe they never tried art, but we can see that the potential is there.”
Meanwhile, Hangen, Shew and others are running their voice about the importance of criticality. HENGEN presented a TEDX talk on the subject in 2024 and shared his work in the Inaugural Research Competition of Arts & Sciences, where he occupied the second place. He hopes that Neuron’s new article inspires conversations between neurologists, doctors, reporters and the general public.
A unified theory of the mind could change the world, but first, it must unify experts. “Woody (Shew) and I really believe we are here,” Hangen said. “And, perhaps slowly, others are beginning to agree.”
Washu was the ideal place for a new concept of the brain to emerge, Hangen said.
“We are surrounded by brilliant people in various fields, including physics, biology, psychology, mathematics and neuroscience, and the community is remarkably solidary,” he said.
“Everyone is ready to help.”
About this memory, learning and research neuroscience
Author: Talia Ogliore
Source: Wustl
Contact: Talia Ogliore – Wustl
Image: The image is accredited to Neuroscience News
Original research: open access.
“Is criticism a unified adjustment point of brain function?” By Keith Hangen et al. Neuron
Abstract
Is criticism a unified adjustment point of brain function?
The brains face selective pressure to optimize the calculation, widely defined. This is achieved through mechanisms that include development, plasticity and homeostasis.
Is there a universal optimal in which the healthy brain tune in, over time and people?
The criticality hypothesis raises such adjustment point.
Criticality is an imbued state of a dynamic generated internally, multiscala and marginally stable that maximizes the characteristics of information processing.
Experimental support emerged two decades ago and has accumulated at an accelerated pace despite the disagreement.
Here, we present the logic of criticality as a general computational end point and review the experimental evidence.
We carry out a meta -analysis of 140 data sets published between 2003 and 2024. We find that a long data controversy is the product of a methodological choice without influence of the underlying dynamics.
Our results suggest that a new generation of research can take advantage of criticality, as a unifying principle of brain function, to accelerate the understanding of behavior, cognition and disease.
