Blog archive

Nonequilibrium thermodynamics of the asymmetric Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model. Our new paper nonequilibrium thermodynamics of large, disordered networks - in collaboration with Masanao Igarashi and Hideaki Shimazaki - has just been published in Nature Communications. In this study we analytically calculate an exact expression for the entropy production of an asymmetric version of the Sherrington-Kirkpatric model, finding ... Read more
June 26 - 1 minute read

Ikerbasque Research Fellow position. I’m thrilled to announce that I’m starting a new position as an Ikerbasque Research Fellow at the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics, where I will join the Mathematical, Computational and Experimental Neuroscience team. I’m really excited to start this new period in a position that will allow to start new long-term research lines and project... Read more
October 1 - less than 1 minute read
How particular is the physics of the free energy principle?. In a new paper in Physics of Life Reviews I present a deep mathematical exploration of the free energy principle (FEP) in collaboration with Beren Millidge, Alexander Tschantz and Chris Buckley. The FEP has gained an important momentum as an ambitious theory aiming to provide a unifying theory of mind and life, explained in terms of approximate ... Read more
March 17 - 3 minute read

A unifying framework for mean-field theories of asymmetric kinetic Ising systems. I’m happy to see published this new paper in collaboration with Amin Moosavi and Hideaki Shimazaki in Nature Communications. In this paper study and unify different kinetic mean-field methods in Ising models with the objective of developing tools for studying large data-sets from networks of neurons in non-equilibrium conditions and near critica... Read more
February 19 - 1 minute read
Critical integration in neural and cognitive systems: Beyond power-law scaling as the hallmark of soft assembly. I just published a new paper with Ezequiel Di Paolo in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. Here we review the link of self-organized criticality and integrated information with ideas about soft assembly in neural and cognitive process. Studying the properties of power-law scaling processes as a in indicator of properties like soft-assembly... Read more
January 30 - 2 minute read

New website. Welcome to my new Jekyll website. I’ll migrate most of the content from the old one, which is still available at https://maguilera0.wordpress.com. Read more
October 2 - less than 1 minute read
DIMENSIVE project. I’m happy to share that I have been granted a MSCA-IF grant to start a project at the University of Sussex in collaboration with Chris Buckley. The project aims to apply information-theoretic and inference methods to develop models of neural activity from zebrafish larvae in closed loop behavior, e.g. trying to apply theoretical methods for app... Read more
June 29 - 1 minute read

Scaling Behaviour and Critical Phase Transitions in Integrated Information Theory. I just published a new paper exploring some of the ideas we initiated in our Integrated information in the thermodynamic limit (Aguilera & Di Paolo, 2019) paper. Here, I explore in detail many of the assumptions of Integrated Information Theory (specifically IIT 3.0) by computing integration in large kinetic Ising networks presenting a crit... Read more
December 17 - 1 minute read
Integrated information in the thermodynamic limit. Together with Ezequiel Di Paolo, we have just published a new paper in which we explore how integrated information scales in very large systems. The capacity to integrate information is crucial for biological, neural and cognitive processes and it is regarded by Integrated Information Theory (IIT) proponents as a measure of conscious activity. I... Read more
March 20 - 2 minute read

Adaptation to criticality through organizational invariance in embodied agents. I just published with Manuel Bedia a paper in Scientific Reports that results from an exploration of how tools from statistical mechanics could be used to model adaptive mechanisms. In this paper, we explore how adaptation to criticality could be used as a general adaptive mechanism in robots controlled by a neural network, using a simple mechan... Read more
May 21 - 1 minute read
Rhythms of the Collective Brain: Metastable Synchronization and Cross-Scale Interactions in Connected Multitudes. I have recently published a new paper where we model social coordination in self-organized crowds social media, using data from the 15M movement in Spain: Aguilera, M (2018). Rhythms of the collective brain: Metastable synchronization and cross-scale interactions in connected multitudes. Complexity Volume 2018, Article ID 4212509. doi:10.115... Read more
March 20 - 1 minute read
Postdoc at the IAS Research Centre for Life, Mind and Society. I recently started at a new postdoc position in the IAS Research Centre for Life, Mind and Society at the University of the Basque Country, funded by a postdoc grant from this university. I will be working with Ezequiel Di Paolo in my postdoc project ‘Information Theory and Maximum Entropy Modelling in Embodied Organisms’ Read more
March 2 - less than 1 minute read

Extended Neural Metastability in an Embodied Model of Sensorimotor Coupling. This paper is an extension of some of the results worked during my PhD thesis. We investigate how the source of metastability in cognitive activity is not necessarily restricted to the action of neural circuits alone, but in some circumstances it can be generated from the sensorimotor coupling between an agent’s brain and its environment. Aguil... Read more
October 9 - 1 minute read

PhD thesis defence – Interaction Dynamics and Autonomy in Cognitive Systems. Last week I defended my PhD dissertation entitled ‘Interaction Dynamics and Autonomy in Cognitive Systems’. It was a beautiful and intense experience for closing four years of work. The thesis was examined by Ricard Solé, Ezequiel di Paolo and Seth Bullock, which provided several points of discussion for a rich and stimulating debate about the c... Read more
December 1 - less than 1 minute read