Physics of Life. Part II: Neural Network as an Active Condensed Matter Body

Dmitry A Kukuruznyak (1)

1 Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research

The non-equilibrium "active agents" establish and break bonds with each other and create an evolving condensed state known as the active matter. Here, the active agents are neurons, and the evolving condensed matter is the brain. This article describes autonomous reconstructions of this active matter. It explains how the neural network creates the mind. The author notices that the active condensed matter made of neurons is similar to that of the molecular bodies of folding proteins and molecular machines. He conjectures that they generate autonomous motions by the same rules. The paper describes voluntary motions of the simple molecular condensed bodies and discusses their interactions with an external environment. In addition to generating motions, the active bodies register external signals and correspondingly adapt their behavior. The active condensed matter bodies can memorize their own active motions and then reproduce those motions. It is shown that deliberate manipulations can transform initially inactive equilibrated condensed matter into the active matter. Based on this, the author suggests manufacturing artificial animate beings from the inanimate matter. These prospective animate forms would be much simpler than the real biological organisms. However, they could serve a useful purpose as "generators of the autonomous behavior". They would make decisions and solve problems by the same rules as the real neural networks. Therefore, the synthetic active condensed matter could produce basic artificial minds.

Mots clés: autonomous biotic motion; active matter; neural networks; physics of mind

Domaines: Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]; Systèmes désordonnés et réseaux de neurones [cond-mat.dis-nn]

Dmitry A Kukuruznyak. Physics of Life. Part II: Neural Network as an Active Condensed Matter Body. 2017. ⟨hal-01575993v1⟩