The human brain is on the edge of chaos

March 21, 2009 | Source: PhysOrg.com

Human brain dynamics exist at a critical point on the edge of chaos or self-organized criticality, allowing us to switch quickly between mental states to respond to changing environmental conditions, Cambridge researchers have found.

The researchers used state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to measure dynamic changes in the synchronization of activity between different regions of the functional network in the human brain.

Computational networks showing these characteristics have also been shown to have optimal memory (data storage) and information-processing capacity.