To not only survive, but also thrive, the brain must efficiently orchestrate distributed computation across space and time. This requires hierarchical organisation facilitating fast information transfer and processing at the lowest possible metabolic cost. Quantifying brain hierarchy is difficult but can be estimated from the asymmetry of information flow. Thermodynamics has successfully characterised hierarchy in many other complex systems. Here, we propose the ‘Thermodynamics of Mind’ framework as a natural way to quantify hierarchical brain orchestration and its underlying mechanisms. This has already provided novel insights into the orchestration of hierarchy in brain states including movie watching, where the hierarchy of the brain is flatter than during rest. Overall, this framework holds great promise for revealing the orchestration of cognition.

中文翻译：

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心灵的热力学


为了不仅生存，而且繁荣，大脑必须有效地协调跨空间和时间的分布式计算。这需要分层组织，以尽可能低的代谢成本促进快速信息传输和处理。量化大脑层次结构很困难，但可以根据信息流的不对称性进行估计。热力学已经成功地表征了许多其他复杂系统的层次结构。在这里，我们提出“心灵热力学”框架作为量化分层大脑编排及其底层机制的自然方法。这已经为大脑状态中的层次结构的编排提供了新的见解，包括看电影时，大脑的层次结构比休息时更平坦。总的来说，这个框架对于揭示认知的编排有着巨大的希望。