Creative exploration as a scale-invariant search on a meaning landscape

Yuval Hart, Hagar Goldberg, Ella Striem-Amit, Avraham E. Mayo, Lior Noy and Uri Alon ()
Additional contact information
Yuval Hart: Harvard University
Hagar Goldberg: Weizmann Institute of Science
Ella Striem-Amit: Harvard University
Avraham E. Mayo: Weizmann Institute of Science
Lior Noy: Weizmann Institute of Science
Uri Alon: Weizmann Institute of Science

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Can knowledge accumulated in systems biology on mechanisms governing cell behavior help us to elucidate cognitive processes, such as human creative search? To address this, we focus on the property of scale invariance, which allows sensory systems to adapt to environmental signals spanning orders of magnitude. For example, bacteria search for nutrients, by responding to relative changes in nutrient concentration rather than absolute levels, via a sensory mechanism termed fold-change detection (FCD). Scale invariance is prevalent in cognition, yet the specific mechanisms are mostly unknown. Here, we screen many possible dynamic equation topologies, to find that an FCD model best describes creative search dynamics. The model further predicts robustness to variations in meaning perception, in agreement with behavioral data. We thus suggest FCD as a specific mechanism for scale invariant search, connecting sensory processes of cells and cognitive processes in human.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07715-8 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-07715-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07715-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().