Soziophysiologie: Grundlegende Prozesse der Emphathiefähigkeit

Diese Übersicht beschreibt Prozesse, welche dem komplexen Phänomen der menschlichen Empathie zugrunde liegen. Automatische, reflexartige Prozesse wie physiologische Ansteckung und Handlungsspiegelung werden über das Spiegelneuronensystem vermittelt und stellen eine Grundlage für die Weiterverarbeitung sozialer Signale dar. Im sozialen Kontakt entsteht damit auf der körperlichen Ebene eine direkte Verbindung zweier Individuen. Diese Verbindung besteht auf der gleichzeitigen Aktivierung gemeinsamer motorischer Repräsentationen. Auf implizite Art werden die so geteilten Eindrücke durch individuelle Assoziationen im limbischen und vegetativen System zu einem affektiven Zustand. Die hier beschriebenen Prozesse werden Soziophysiologie genannt. Durch kontrolliert-reflektierende, selbst-referentielle, d.h. auf die persönliche Innenwelt gerichtete (Weiter-)Verarbeitung solcher sozialen Signale, entstehen schliesslich explizite Repräsentationen des Bewusstseins von Anderen. Diese höhergradigen Prozesse nennen wir soziale Kognition. Durch das Zusammenspiel der verschiedenen Prozesse entsteht das Phänomen der menschlichen Empathiefähigkeit

Macroscopic limit cycle via pure noise-induced phase transition

Bistability generated via a pure noise-induced phase transition is reexamined from the view of bifurcations in macroscopic cumulant dynamics. It allows an analytical study of the phase diagram in more general cases than previous methods. In addition using this approach we investigate patially-extended systems with two degrees of freedom per site. For this system, the analytic solution of the stationary Fokker-Planck equation is not available and a standard mean field approach cannot be used to find noise induced phase transitions. A new approach based on cumulant dynamics predicts a noise-induced phase transition through a Hopf bifurcation leading to a macroscopic limit cycle motion, which is confirmed by numerical simulation.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Active Brownian particles with velocity-alignment and active fluctuations

We consider a model of active Brownian particles with velocity-alignment in two spatial dimensions with passive and active fluctuations. Hereby, active fluctuations refers to purely non-equilibrium stochastic forces correlated with the heading of an individual active particle. In the simplest case studied here, they are assumed as independent stochastic forces parallel (speed noise) and perpendicular (angular noise) to the velocity of the particle. On the other hand, passive fluctuations are defined by a noise vector independent of the direction of motion of a particle, and may account for example for thermal fluctuations. We derive a macroscopic description of the active Brownian particle gas with velocity-alignment interaction. Hereby, we start from the individual based description in terms of stochastic differential equations (Langevin equations) and derive equations of motion for the coarse grained kinetic variables (density, velocity and temperature) via a moment expansion of the corresponding probability density function. We focus here in particular on the different impact of active and passive fluctuations on the onset of collective motion and show how active fluctuations in the active Brownian dynamics can change the phase-transition behaviour of the system. In particular, we show that active angular fluctuation lead to an earlier breakdown of collective motion and to emergence of a new bistable regime in the mean-field case.Comment: 5 figures, 22 pages, submitted to New Journal of Physic

Spontaneous spiking in an autaptic Hodgkin-Huxley set up

The effect of intrinsic channel noise is investigated for the dynamic response of a neuronal cell with a delayed feedback loop. The loop is based on the so-called autapse phenomenon in which dendrites establish not only connections to neighboring cells but as well to its own axon. The biophysical modeling is achieved in terms of a stochastic Hodgkin-Huxley model containing such a built in delayed feedback. The fluctuations stem from intrinsic channel noise, being caused by the stochastic nature of the gating dynamics of ion channels. The influence of the delayed stimulus is systematically analyzed with respect to the coupling parameter and the delay time in terms of the interspike interval histograms and the average interspike interval. The delayed feedback manifests itself in the occurrence of bursting and a rich multimodal interspike interval distribution, exhibiting a delay-induced reduction of the spontaneous spiking activity at characteristic frequencies. Moreover, a specific frequency-locking mechanism is detected for the mean interspike interval.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure

On the attractors of two-dimensional Rayleigh oscillators including noise

We study sustained oscillations in two-dimensional oscillator systems driven by Rayleigh-type negative friction. In particular we investigate the influence of mismatch of the two frequencies. Further we study the influence of external noise and nonlinearity of the conservative forces. Our consideration is restricted to the case that the driving is rather weak and that the forces show only weak deviations from radial symmetry. For this case we provide results for the attractors and the bifurcations of the system. We show that for rational relations of the frequencies the system develops several rotational excitations with right/left symmetry, corresponding to limit cycles in the four-dimensional phase space. The corresponding noisy distributions have the form of hoops or tires in the four-dimensional space. For irrational frequency relations, as well as for increasing strength of driving or noise the periodic excitations are replaced by chaotic oscillations.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Noise Induced Complexity: From Subthreshold Oscillations to Spiking in Coupled Excitable Systems

We study stochastic dynamics of an ensemble of N globally coupled excitable elements. Each element is modeled by a FitzHugh-Nagumo oscillator and is disturbed by independent Gaussian noise. In simulations of the Langevin dynamics we characterize the collective behavior of the ensemble in terms of its mean field and show that with the increase of noise the mean field displays a transition from a steady equilibrium to global oscillations and then, for sufficiently large noise, back to another equilibrium. Diverse regimes of collective dynamics ranging from periodic subthreshold oscillations to large-amplitude oscillations and chaos are observed in the course of this transition. In order to understand details and mechanisms of noise-induced dynamics we consider a thermodynamic limit $N\to\infty$ of the ensemble, and derive the cumulant expansion describing temporal evolution of the mean field fluctuations. In the Gaussian approximation this allows us to perform the bifurcation analysis; its results are in good agreement with dynamical scenarios observed in the stochastic simulations of large ensembles

Asymptotic Scaling of the Diffusion Coefficient of Fluctuating "Pulled" Fronts

We present a (heuristic) theoretical derivation for the scaling of the diffusion coefficient $D_f$ for fluctuating ``pulled'' fronts. In agreement with earlier numerical simulations, we find that as $N\to\infty$, $D_f$ approaches zero as $1/\ln^3N$, where $N$ is the average number of particles per correlation volume in the stable phase of the front. This behaviour of $D_f$ stems from the shape fluctuations at the very tip of the front, and is independent of the microscopic model.Comment: Some minor algebra corrected, to appear in Rapid Comm., Phys. Rev.

An Analytical Study of Coupled Two-State Stochastic Resonators

The two-state model of stochastic resonance is extended to a chain of coupled two-state elements governed by the dynamics of Glauber's stochastic Ising model. Appropriate assumptions on the model parameters turn the chain into a prototype system of coupled stochastic resonators. In a weak-signal limit analytical expressions are derived for the spectral power amplification and the signal-to-noise ratio of a two-state element embedded into the chain. The effect of the coupling between the elements on both quantities is analysed and array-enhanced stochastic resonance is established for pure as well as noisy periodic signals. The coupling-induced improvement of the SNR compared to an uncoupled element is shown to be limited by a factor four which is only reached for vanishing input noise.Comment: 29 pages, 5 figure