John Beggs unpacks the critical brain hypothesis

In this “Brain Inspired” episode, John Beggs, professor of physics at Indiana University Bloomington, joins Paul Middlebrooks to discuss criticality in brain activity. Systems that operate at criticality, a state between too much order and too much chaos, are optimized for computing and information transmission, among other beneficial properties. Beggs and Middlebrooks also discuss challenges around measuring criticality, criticisms of the criticality hypothesis, and a wide range of past and current research on the topic.

Read the transcript.