Morten Kringelbach
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford; Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, Linacre College, Oxford; Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University
Biological naturalist Consciousness requires living metabolic hardware
Kringelbach’s collaboration with Gustavo Deco produced the 2017 result that the resting brain sits at the edge of a Hopf bifurcation, maximizing metastability, and the pair’s 2020 Cell Reports paper “Brain states and transitions, insights from computational neuroscience” set out the broader program of describing conscious states as regions of a whole-brain model’s parameter space. The 2024 Trends in Cognitive Sciences paper “The Thermodynamics of Mind,” with Kringelbach as lead author, pushed that program explicitly into statistical mechanics, framing entropy production, irreversibility, and departure from equilibrium as the physical quantities a theory of consciousness needs to explain.
That framing is what makes the fluctuation-dissipation theorem the natural next step. A system at thermal equilibrium obeys a fixed relationship between its spontaneous fluctuations and its response to a perturbation. Kringelbach’s whole-brain models had already shown the brain operates far from that equilibrium point during wakefulness, so a direct measurement of how far, and whether that distance tracks conscious state, follows from the modeling program rather than arriving as an external addition to it.
For substrate independence, Kringelbach’s work names the quantity a claim about non-biological consciousness would need to reproduce. It is not a specific molecule or tissue type, it is a dynamical regime, a system driven persistently away from equilibrium in a structured way. Whether any artificial substrate instantiates an analogous regime is the open question his thermodynamic framework puts on the table.
Known for. Whole-brain computational modeling of non-equilibrium brain dynamics, the thermodynamics of mind framework, hedonic and pleasure circuitry
Coverage on this site
Related researchers
- Tomas Berjaga-BuisanComputational Neuroscience Group, Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, BarcelonaNon-equilibrium thermodynamics of whole-brain models, fluctuation-dissipation theorem violations as a non-invasive consciousness marker
-
Gustavo DecoICREA, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, BarcelonaWhole-brain computational models, metastability at the edge of the Hopf bifurcation, the dynamical cortical core
- Marcello MassiminiUniversity of MilanThe Perturbational Complexity Index, TMS-EEG measurement of consciousness, disorders of consciousness assessment, sleep slow waves
- František BaluškaUniversity of BonnCellular consciousness, subcellular nanobrains, plant neurobiology, sentient cells as units of physiology
- Tristan A. BekinschteinDepartment of Psychology / Consciousness and Cognition Lab, University of CambridgeClinical biomarkers of consciousness, local-global auditory paradigm, transitions from wakefulness to sedation, neural dynamics of awareness
- Douglas BlackistonAllen Discovery Center at Tufts UniversityMemory stability during brain remodeling, xenobot platform design, amphibian memory transplantation work
Morten Kringelbach is listed with the other biological naturalists, who hold that consciousness requires living metabolic hardware. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.