How does the organization of neural information processing enable humans’ sophisticated cognition? In this talk I will detail how we decompose functional interactions between brain regions into synergistic and redundant components, revealing their distinct information-processing roles in the human brain. Redundant interactions are predominantly associated with structurally coupled, modular sensorimotor processing. Synergistic interactions instead support integrative processes and complex cognition across higher-order brain networks. The human brain leverages synergistic information to a greater extent than nonhuman primates, with high-synergy association cortices exhibiting the highest degree of evolutionary cortical expansion. Finally, I will show how the same synergistic core is also affected by pathological and pharmacological perturbations of consciousness, demonstrating fragility as the dark side of synergy. Overall, this information-resolved approach provides analytic tools to disentangle information integration from coupling, illuminating how the human neurocognitive architecture navigates the trade-off between robustness and integration.
Join at: imt.lu/aula1