Scale invariance in biology: coincidence or footprint of a universal mechanism?

Gisiger, Thomas

doi:10.1017/s1464793101005607

Cited by 315 publications

(277 citation statements)

References 124 publications

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“…Weber's law observed in the domains of perception and cognition is a characteristic feature of many biological systems, from single neuronal level to organism's behavioural level (Gisiger, 2001;Nieder & Miller, 2003). In this study, the increase of the scalar property value in patients was associated with poor CPT performance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time perception and its neuropsychological correlates in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy volunteers

Lee

Bhaker

Mysore

et al. 2009

Psychiatry Research

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Disordered time perception has been reported in schizophrenia. We investigated time perception dysfunction and its neuropsychological correlates in patients with schizophrenia. Thirty-eight patients and thirty-eight age and sex matched healthy volunteers were compared in an auditory temporal bisection paradigm using two interval ranges (a 400/800ms condition and a 1000/2000ms condition). In the temporal bisection, subjects were required to categorise a probe duration as short or long, based upon the similarity with two reference durations. All subjects also completed a battery of neuropsychological tests measuring sustained attention, shortand long-term memory and executive function. In the 400/800ms condition, patients judged durations significantly shorter than did control subjects. Patients also exhibited decreased temporal sensitivity in both conditions. We found in both groups a negative association between temporal sensitivity and sustained attention for the 400/800ms condition, and between temporal sensitivity and long-term memory for the 1000/200ms condition. In patients, short-term memory performance was negatively associated with duration judgement in both conditions, while executive dysfunction was correlated to a general performance deficit in the 400/800ms condition. These findings suggest the possibility that time perception abnormalities in schizophrenia are part of neuropsychological dysfunction and are likely to adversely impact upon activity of daily living.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time perception and its neuropsychological correlates in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy volunteers

Lee

Bhaker

Mysore

et al. 2009

Psychiatry Research

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“…Indeed, the recent proliferation and interest in power laws, allometric scaling relationships, and so-called ''scale-free network'' phenomena suggest the possibility of some common principles operating in distant theaters of science (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10).…”

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confidence: 99%

Observations on related ecological exponents

Southwood¹,

May²,

Sugihara³

2006

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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We observe a relationship among three independently derived power laws in ecology: (i) total number of species versus area, (ii) species frequency versus species length, and (iii) maximal body size versus area. Aside from showing how these historically disparate phenomena are connected, we show how recent empirical results relating the maximal body size of top terrestrial vertebrates to the square root of land area conform to a prior theoretical expectation given by two of the above power laws. Of particular interest is the observation that the exponent relating species length to species frequency suggests a dimension for niche space for terrestrial vertebrate assemblages of D Ϸ 3͞2. This value, along with power law for maximal body size, versus area, gives rise to the canonical species area exponent z Ϸ 1͞4.scaling ͉ power law ͉ dimensionality ͉ species-area ͉ canonical hypothesis M ore often than not in the natural sciences, one variable (e.g., force) is related to another variable (e.g., acceleration) only when it is raised to some power (e.g., 2 in this case). Indeed, the recent proliferation and interest in power laws, allometric scaling relationships, and so-called ''scale-free network'' phenomena suggest the possibility of some common principles operating in distant theaters of science (1-10).However enticing this idea may be, the ubiquity of power laws (particularly empirical ones) must certainly be due in large part to the human tendency to seek parsimonious and ready fits to data, with power laws being perhaps the simplest and most forgiving approximation. Additionally, power laws arise naturally when there is explicit reference to the dimension or covering measure of a quantity, such as when one is seeking to normalize, or make comparable, measurements of length and volume. Thus, it is not surprising to find scaling relationships in diverse fields such as astrophysics, particle physics, turbulence theory, computer science, physiology, ecology, geography, etymology, and terrorist networks, to name a few.On a more concrete level, the diversity of these power laws within a given field suggests that there may be interchangeability among some of them that can be usefully exploited.Our aim here is to show how three common power laws in ecology are related and to show further how this relationship can lead to an independent verification of a recent and very interesting empirical result that relates the body size of the largest resident terrestrial vertebrates (from the Late Pleistocene to present) to modern Holocene land areas (11). On a more ambitious note, we show that the observed exponent relating species length to species frequency suggests a dimension for niche space for terrestrial vertebrate assemblages between D ϭ 3͞2 and D ϭ 2. The Species-Area ExponentOne of the earliest and most ubiquitous scaling relationships in ecology came from the observation that larger areas contain more species in a surprisingly orderly way. This so-called speciesarea relationship emerged in the early 20th century as a sa...

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“…This is generally taken as a signature of SOC. ; for an extensive review on scale invariance in Biology: Gisiger, 2001). SOC reflects the process of propagation of longrange interactions based on local effects in the medium (as a kind of domino effect) until the state of criticality is attained at which any further disturbance triggers an abrupt, critical phase transitions (Flyvbjerg, 1996).…”

Section: Dynamics In Dynamic Core and The Global Neuronal Workpacementioning

confidence: 99%

Brain dynamics across levels of organization

Werner

2007

Journal of Physiology-Paris

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After presenting evidence that the electrical activity recorded from the brain surface can reflect metastable state transitions of neuronal configurations at the mesoscopic level, I will suggest that their patterns may correspond to the distinctive spatio-temporal activity in the Dynamic Core (DC) and the Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW), respectively, in the models of the Edelman group on the one hand, and of Dehaene-Changeux, on the other. In both cases, the recursively reentrant activity flow in intracortical and cortical-subcortical neuron loops plays an essential and distinct role. Reasons will be given for viewing the temporal characteristics of this activity flow as signature of Self-Organized Criticality (SOC), notably in reference to the dynamics of neuronal avalanches. This point of view enables the use of statistical Physics approaches for exploring phase transitions, scaling and universality properties of DC and GNW, with relevance to the macroscopic electrical activity in EEG and EMG.

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Scale invariance in biology: coincidence or footprint of a universal mechanism?

Cited by 315 publications

References 124 publications

Time perception and its neuropsychological correlates in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy volunteers

Time perception and its neuropsychological correlates in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy volunteers

Observations on related ecological exponents

Brain dynamics across levels of organization

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