Criticality: balance between order and chaos

Selen discusses criticality as maximal complexity and how psychedelics push the brain closer to that point.

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Episode notes

Standing waves and resonant frequencies appear everywhere in the world around us, from musical notes and swaying bridges to electron orbits and animal coats. This week's guest, neuroscientist Selen Atasoy, wondered if they could also be found in the brain.

Her work has led to a new way to understand different states of consciousness -- from anaesthesia through our normal waking state to meditation and psychedelics. She explains how changes in our awareness reflect a shifting balance between order and chaos, and why psychedelics may tune the brain closer to a critical point of maximum complexity.

I talk to Selen about what this all means for our understanding of the mind, including how modern life may be blunting our awareness, and whether consciousness might be possible elsewhere in the natural world, beyond the human brain.

This isn’t the end of Selen’s story, though, as she recently trained as a psychotherapist. We discuss what inspired her leap from objective science towards a more personal exploration of the mind, and how we can all find harmony within.

Selen's home page

https://www.selenatasoy.com/

Selen’s first paper on harmonics in the brain (2016)

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10340

Selen’s paper on harmonics and LSD (2017)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0079612318301018

Selen’s paper on meditators (2023)

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.16.567347v1.abstract

Video of Chladni sand patterns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFAcYruShow

Harmonics and animal coat patterns

https://www.math.ttu.edu/~anpeace/files/Math5354Papers/murray_SciAm.pdf