Traditionally ignored in comparison with the energy flow, the interest on the information flow an... more Traditionally ignored in comparison with the energy flow, the interest on the information flow and in general on the informational perspective is nowadays manifest in biological fields. Herein we will revisit classical ideas on biomolecular information processing, basically from Efim Liberman and Michael Conrad, weaving them together with new views on the information flow as captured by cellular signaling systems and with the development of biological complexity. A consistent new explanatory framework looms-potentially contributing to a new cell theory. It would incorporate fundamental conceptualizations on the mechanisms of molecular recognition and informational architectures, the life cycle and the characterization of meaning, and finally the emergence of biological complexity. Concerning the evolutionary process, this informational approach depicts an indefinite series of recursion processes performed in the open-ended environment of the real world, potentially affected by multiple contingencies modifying the informational architectures involved in recursion. Consequently, a large variety of molecular tools and systems would have been incorporated speeding up the variability of genomes and facilitating their displacement in sequence space. To the extent to which the comparison with human mobility in physical space may hold, a power law could be hypothesized interconnecting the variability outcomes of the different evolutionary 'vehicles' or variation modes. Contributing to a renewed discussion on the evolutionary process is another essential goal of the present work.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Jan 25, 2006
Abstract: One hundred years after Santiago Ramón Cajal established the bases of modern neuroscien... more Abstract: One hundred years after Santiago Ramón Cajal established the bases of modern neuroscience in his masterpiece Textura del sistema nervioso del hombre y de los vertebrados, the question is stated again: What is the status of consciousness today? The responses in this book, by contemporary leading figures of neuroscience, evolution, molecular biology, computer science, and quantum physics, collectively compose a fascinating conceptual landscape. Both the evolutionary emergence of consciousness and its development towards the highest level may be analyzed by a wealth of new theories and hypotheses, including Cajal's prescient ones. Some noticeable gaps remain, however. Celebrating the centennial of Textura is a timely occasion to reassess how close—and how far—our system of the sciences is to explaining consciousness.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an incurable neurodegenerative disorder which affects over 10 million... more Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an incurable neurodegenerative disorder which affects over 10 million people worldwide. Early detection and correct evaluation of the disease is critical for appropriate medication and to slow the advance of the symptoms. In this scenario, it is critical to develop clinical decision support systems contributing to an early, efficient, and reliable diagnosis of this illness. In this paper we present a feasibility study for a clinical decision support system for the diagnosis of PD based on the acoustic characteristics of laughter. Our decision support system is based on laugh analysis with speech recognition methods and automatic classification techniques. We evaluated different cepstral coefficients to identify laugh characteristics of healthy and ill subjects combined with machine learning classification models. The decision support system reached 83% accuracy rate with an AUC value of 0.86 for PD–healthy laughs classification in a database of 20,000 sam...
Scire: representación y organización del conocimiento, 1996
La información es un concepto polémico en las más diversas disciplinas. En el campo de la física,... more La información es un concepto polémico en las más diversas disciplinas. En el campo de la física, la idea de que información y entropía están íntimamente relacionadas ha circulado durante bastantes años. Sin embargo, los conceptos avanzados por Boltzmann y Schrodinger difieren notablemente de las hipótesis de Stonier sobre la posibilidad de que la información sea una propiedad del universo, una parte de su estructura interna. En la teoría de la comunicación de Shannon, la información se asocia con el grado de libertad de elección que tenemos al construir los mensajes. Stonier defiende que la definición del término información es análoga a la definición que hacen los físicos del término energía. La energía se define como la capacidad para realizar un trabajo; a la información le correspondería la capacidad para organizar los sistemas. Se pueden proporcionar numerosos ejemplos de la necesidad, en el actual sistema científico, de un análisis riguroso de la información. En biología, p. ...
Traditionally ignored in comparison with the energy flow, the interest on the information flow an... more Traditionally ignored in comparison with the energy flow, the interest on the information flow and in general on the informational perspective is nowadays manifest in biological fields. Herein we will revisit classical ideas on biomolecular information processing, basically from Efim Liberman and Michael Conrad, weaving them together with new views on the information flow as captured by cellular signaling systems and with the development of biological complexity. A consistent new explanatory framework looms-potentially contributing to a new cell theory. It would incorporate fundamental conceptualizations on the mechanisms of molecular recognition and informational architectures, the life cycle and the characterization of meaning, and finally the emergence of biological complexity. Concerning the evolutionary process, this informational approach depicts an indefinite series of recursion processes performed in the open-ended environment of the real world, potentially affected by multiple contingencies modifying the informational architectures involved in recursion. Consequently, a large variety of molecular tools and systems would have been incorporated speeding up the variability of genomes and facilitating their displacement in sequence space. To the extent to which the comparison with human mobility in physical space may hold, a power law could be hypothesized interconnecting the variability outcomes of the different evolutionary 'vehicles' or variation modes. Contributing to a renewed discussion on the evolutionary process is another essential goal of the present work.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Jan 25, 2006
Abstract: One hundred years after Santiago Ramón Cajal established the bases of modern neuroscien... more Abstract: One hundred years after Santiago Ramón Cajal established the bases of modern neuroscience in his masterpiece Textura del sistema nervioso del hombre y de los vertebrados, the question is stated again: What is the status of consciousness today? The responses in this book, by contemporary leading figures of neuroscience, evolution, molecular biology, computer science, and quantum physics, collectively compose a fascinating conceptual landscape. Both the evolutionary emergence of consciousness and its development towards the highest level may be analyzed by a wealth of new theories and hypotheses, including Cajal's prescient ones. Some noticeable gaps remain, however. Celebrating the centennial of Textura is a timely occasion to reassess how close—and how far—our system of the sciences is to explaining consciousness.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an incurable neurodegenerative disorder which affects over 10 million... more Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an incurable neurodegenerative disorder which affects over 10 million people worldwide. Early detection and correct evaluation of the disease is critical for appropriate medication and to slow the advance of the symptoms. In this scenario, it is critical to develop clinical decision support systems contributing to an early, efficient, and reliable diagnosis of this illness. In this paper we present a feasibility study for a clinical decision support system for the diagnosis of PD based on the acoustic characteristics of laughter. Our decision support system is based on laugh analysis with speech recognition methods and automatic classification techniques. We evaluated different cepstral coefficients to identify laugh characteristics of healthy and ill subjects combined with machine learning classification models. The decision support system reached 83% accuracy rate with an AUC value of 0.86 for PD–healthy laughs classification in a database of 20,000 sam...
Scire: representación y organización del conocimiento, 1996
La información es un concepto polémico en las más diversas disciplinas. En el campo de la física,... more La información es un concepto polémico en las más diversas disciplinas. En el campo de la física, la idea de que información y entropía están íntimamente relacionadas ha circulado durante bastantes años. Sin embargo, los conceptos avanzados por Boltzmann y Schrodinger difieren notablemente de las hipótesis de Stonier sobre la posibilidad de que la información sea una propiedad del universo, una parte de su estructura interna. En la teoría de la comunicación de Shannon, la información se asocia con el grado de libertad de elección que tenemos al construir los mensajes. Stonier defiende que la definición del término información es análoga a la definición que hacen los físicos del término energía. La energía se define como la capacidad para realizar un trabajo; a la información le correspondería la capacidad para organizar los sistemas. Se pueden proporcionar numerosos ejemplos de la necesidad, en el actual sistema científico, de un análisis riguroso de la información. En biología, p. ...
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