BioCircuits Institute, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr 0328, La Jolla, CA 92093-0328, United States.
Phys Life Rev. 2012 Mar;9(1):51-73. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2011.11.002. Epub 2011 Nov 17.
Timing and dynamics of information in the brain is a hot field in modern neuroscience. The analysis of the temporal evolution of brain information is crucially important for the understanding of higher cognitive mechanisms in normal and pathological states. From the perspective of information dynamics, in this review we discuss working memory capacity, language dynamics, goal-dependent behavior programming and other functions of brain activity. In contrast with the classical description of information theory, which is mostly algebraic, brain flow information dynamics deals with problems such as the stability/instability of information flows, their quality, the timing of sequential processing, the top-down cognitive control of perceptual information, and information creation. In this framework, different types of information flow instabilities correspond to different cognitive disorders. On the other hand, the robustness of cognitive activity is related to the control of the information flow stability. We discuss these problems using both experimental and theoretical approaches, and we argue that brain activity is better understood considering information flows in the phase space of the corresponding dynamical model. In particular, we show how theory helps to understand intriguing experimental results in this matter, and how recent knowledge inspires new theoretical formalisms that can be tested with modern experimental techniques.
大脑中的信息的时间和动态是现代神经科学的一个热门领域。分析大脑信息的时间演化对于理解正常和病理状态下的高级认知机制至关重要。从信息动力学的角度来看，在这篇综述中，我们讨论了工作记忆容量、语言动态、目标依赖行为编程和大脑活动的其他功能。与信息论的经典描述大多是代数的不同，大脑流信息动力学涉及信息流的稳定性/不稳定性、信息流的质量、序列处理的时间、感知信息的自上而下认知控制以及信息创建等问题。在这个框架中，不同类型的信息流不稳定性对应于不同的认知障碍。另一方面，认知活动的稳健性与信息流稳定性的控制有关。我们使用实验和理论方法讨论了这些问题，并认为考虑到相应动态模型相空间中的信息流，大脑活动可以得到更好的理解。特别是，我们展示了理论如何帮助理解这方面的有趣实验结果，以及最近的知识如何激发新的理论形式主义，可以用现代实验技术进行检验。
