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Biophysical Models of Human Behavior: Is There a Place
for Free Will?
Renato Teodoro Ramos
a
a
Institute of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de So Paulo and Department of
Psychology , Universidade Metodista de So Paulo , Brazil
Published online: 05 Jul 2011.
To cite this article: Renato Teodoro Ramos (2011) Biophysical Models of Human Behavior: Is There a Place for Free Will?, AJOB
Neuroscience, 2:3, 37-43, DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2011.580492
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2011.580492
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AJOB Neuroscience, 2(3): 3743, 2011
Copyright c Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 2150-7740 print / 2150-7759 online
DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2011.580492
Target Article
Biophysical Models of Human Behavior:
Is There a Place for Free Will?
Renato Teodoro Ramos, Institute of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de
S ao Paulo and Department of Psychology, Universidade Metodista de S ao Paulo, Brazil
This article proposes a recontextualization of the conception of free will in terms of social events rather than in mental experiences. My objective is to demonstrate that
the behavior of human social groups composed of individuals freely interacting among each other exhibits well-dened patterns that can precisely be described by a
physics formalism. Although not directly approaching the nature of the mental states involved in each individual behavior, I argue that the emergence of organized
social behavior occurs under the inuence of free will. First, I briey introduce the concept of self-organized criticality (SOC) that is central to the understanding of my
argument. Second, I reviewexperimental data showing that normal individuals and patients with different mental disorders exhibit a social behavior pattern compatible
with the presence of SOC. Third, a brief discussion about the functioning of free will in psychiatric disorders is presented. Finally, the implications for psychological and
social theories of including free will in this kind of physical model are discussed.
Keywords: bioethics, cognition, culture, free will, neuroscience, psychiatric disorders
Discussions about free will occur much more frequently
in philosophy and psychology than in physics. The dualist
viewabout the nature of mental and physical stuffs is prob-
ably involved in this state of affairs, but the difculties in
applying physical concepts in philosophical investigation
must also be considered. Elements such as bodies, forces,
elds, and charges are classic in physical conceptions of the
world, but mental phenomena still constitute a challenge to
natural sciences.
Although the explanatory pathway from atoms to the
human mind is full of conceptual jumps and incomplete
theories, the study of human behavior as a physical system
governed by natural laws is possible through the applica-
tion of complex systems theory.
1
One of the main advan-
tages of this approach has been the possibility of study-
ing the emergence of robust patterns of self-organization
in natural systems from termite colonies (Miramontes and
DeSouza 2008) to the walking behavior of pedestrian so-
cial groups (Moussaid et al. 2010). In this article I explore
one concept from complex system theory, the idea of self-
organized criticality, to discuss the inuence of free will in
the emergence of complex social patterns.
I should make clear that the hypothesis I am forward-
ing here is based on a recontextualization of the conception
of free will in terms of social events rather than in mental
experiences, and therefore I do not directly talk about free
The author is grateful to Prof. Ronald Ranvaud and Dr. Thales Reboucas for the valuable comments on this article.
Address correspondence to Renato Teodoro Ramos, Institute of Psychiatry, Hospital das Clinicas, Universidade de S ao Paulo, Rua Ovidio
Pires de Campos, 785 LIM-23, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil 05403-010. E-mail: renato.ramos@hcnet.usp.br
1. Briey, complex systems are physical systems composed of interconnected parts exhibiting global properties that are not evident from
the properties of the individual parts. This concept is applied to the study of unexpected emergent patterns observed in many phenomena
in physics, chemistry, biology, and economics, for example (see Gell-Mann 1994).
will or any other mental state. In fact, I keep several core
psychological and philosophical discussions about the na-
ture of free will aside and I simply admit that free will exists
and it is present in ordinary life, acting as a relevant factor
in determining our actions.
My objective is to demonstrate that the behavior of
human social groups composed by individuals freely in-
teracting among each other exhibits well-dened patterns
that can precisely be described by a physics formalism. Al-
though not directly approaching the nature of the mental
states involved in each individual behavior, I argue that the
emergence of organized social behavior occurs under the
inuence of free will.
I outline my strategy as follows: First, I briey intro-
duce the concept of self-organized criticality (SOC) that is
central to the understanding of my argument. Second, I re-
view experimental data showing that normal individuals
and patients with different mental disorders exhibit a social
behavior pattern compatible with the presence of SOC. The
inclusion of mental disorders in this discussion is necessary
because the demonstrationof SOCdemands the observation
of individuals withsubstantial variabilityintheir behaviors.
Consequently, a brief presentation about the functioning of
free will in psychiatric disorders is necessary to prepare the
nal discussion on the implications of including free will in
this kind of physical model.
ajob Neuroscience 37
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WHAT IS SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY?
The concept of self-organized criticality (SOC) was pro-
posed by (Bak, Tang, and Wiesenfeld 1987) to explain the
common nding of spatial fractal and fractal time series
in different natural systems. Power laws are mathemati-
cal markers of the presence of SOC and they refer to the
nonrandom variation of a given event over space or time.
For example, the intensities of earthquakes in a certain ge-
ographic region show variations over time, with stronger
earthquakes (i.e., those releasing greatest amounts of en-
ergy) being less frequent than the weaker ones. When a
temporal series of seismic activities is orderedfromthe most
to the least frequent intensity, the resulting curve shows
the aspect of an exponential distribution or power law
(Figure 1).
The paradigmatic system exhibiting SOC is constituted
by a sandpile when new grains are added. Sandpiles have
a conic form with a well-dened slope. After the slope
attains a critical value, the addition of more sand starts
to produce avalanches that temporarily reduce the height
of the pile to a value such that the slope stays constant.
The sandpile has always the same aspect, independent
of its absolute size. Small piles are similar to big ones
and what exactly happens when a new grain is added to
the pile is always unpredictable. For a critical system,
the same perturbation applied at a different position or
at the same position at different times can lead to a response
of any size. The average may not be a useful measure of the
response; in fact, the average might not even exist (Jensen
1998, 7).
The term self-organized criticality means that sand-
piles naturally converge to the critical value of the slope,
without any special external adjustment or control (Gell-
Mann 1994). An interesting characteristic of such a system
is that althoughit is impossible topredict the consequence of
adding a single grain(a small or a big avalanche), the behav-
ior of the entire pile is completely describable in statistical
terms. Small avalanches are more frequent thanbigones and
Figure 1. This gure illustrates two possible patterns of distributionof a givenvariable. The normal curve (A) describes
the distribution of variables like age or weight of a sample of individuals. The description of this kind of variable
can be made through measures of central tendency and variance. The distribution of certain variables does not follow
normal distribution. If the intensity of earthquakes in a certain geographic region occurring during a certain period
of time is plotted according the ranking of the quakes, i.e., from the less to the more frequent intensity, the resulting
curve shows the aspect of a power law(B). If, instead of linear scales, we plot the same power lawon logarithmic scales
the graphic assumes the aspect of a straight line as shown in (C).
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Biophysical Models of Human Behavior
the relative frequency among them follows an exponential
relationship, a power law. Trafc jams, stock markets, and
words in human languages are other examples of systems
that exhibit SOC (Awazu and Kaneko 2009; Laneri, Rozen-
feld, and Albano 2005; Main and Naylor 2010; Perez-Reche,
Truskinovsky, and Zanzotto 2008; Phillips 2009; Thatcher,
North, and Biver 2009).
According to Jensen (1998, 1), These systems are com-
plex inthe sense that nosingle characteristic evensize exists:
there is not just one time and one length scale that controls
the temporal evolution of these systems. Although the dy-
namical response of the systems is complex, the simplifying
aspect is that the statistical properties are described by sim-
ple power laws.
Another characteristic of systems exhibiting self-
organized criticality is the presence of self-similarity. An
object is considered self-similar if it has the same aspect
on any scale, i.e., if it is a geometric object made up of
smaller copies of itself (Serrano, Krioukov, and Boguna
2008). Self-similarity in terms of human behavior means
that although very agitated individuals showintense varia-
tions in their behavior (in terms of social interactions, for ex-
ample) in comparison with depressive individuals (who are
less socially interactive in absolute terms), the probability of
observing small or bigger variations of their behavior in re-
lation to their basal levels is the same. Due to these charac-
teristics, the demonstrationof the presence of SOCinhuman
behavior requires the study of individuals with contrasting
behaviors.
In fact, the presence of power laws and self-similarity
was already demonstrated in individuals with differ-
ent mental disorders. Piqueira and colleagues (1999)
collected data from 40 individuals (19 individuals with ma-
jor depression, 11 with mania, and 10 with schizophrenia)
consecutively admitted into a psychiatric unit for acute
patients. Individual behavior was evaluated during 60 days
through two simple scales scored daily by an observer,
who averaged the patients individual behavior regarding
psychomotor activity and social interaction on the pre-
ceding 24 hours. The rating scales were: (a) psychomotor
activity: 1, calm, adequate; 2, mild restlessness, noticed
only when asked; 3, clearly uneasy, frequently walking
around the ward; 4, severe agitation, disturbing other
patients; 5, extreme excitation, needing sedation and/or
physical restriction; and (b) social interaction: 1, active
social contact, interacting with the other patients and staff;
2, mild tendency to socially withdraw, noticed only when
asked; 3, clearly isolated, keeping some social contact with
a few people; 4, severe social inhibition, keeping contact
only when stimulated; 5, absence of verbal and nonverbal
communication, catatonia (Piqueira et al. 1999).
This study was later expanded to include the evaluation
of 34 normal individuals using equivalent self-rating scales:
(a) subjective sensation of well-being: 1, moderate sensation
of dissatisfaction/restlessness; 2, mild sensation of dissatis-
faction/restlessness; 3, comfortable, neutral feelings; 4, mild
sensation of satisfaction and well-being; 5, moderate sensa-
tionof satisfactionandwell-being; and(b) social interaction:
1, very isolated; 2, moderate isolation; 3, usual levels of so-
cial interactions; 4, mild increase in social interactions; 5,
moderate increase in social interactions (Ramos, Sassi, and
Piqueira 2011).
Figure 2 illustrates the kind of result obtained from all
groups of patients and controls. The score given for each
individual for each scale were computed. The graphic cor-
responding to each group (controls, depressive, manic, and
schizophrenic patients) was created by attributing a rank
position from the most to the less frequent score. For exam-
ple, the most frequent score for individuals withschizophre-
nia was 3 in social interaction (clearly isolated, keeping
some social contact with a few people), while the most
frequent score for individuals with mania was 1 (active so-
cial contact, interacting with the other patients and staff).
Although the groups differed in absolute terms, Figure 2
shows that the relative occurrence of scores along the period
of observation, fromthe most to the less frequent, followeda
robust power lawinall groups. Inother words, inall groups,
small behavioral changes were more frequent than large
ones and the relationship among the occurrence of them
for each group were remarkably constant and followed a
power law. This means that patients with schizophrenia
or mania are subject to more dramatic variation in their
behavior than normal individuals, who, in turn, are more
active and socially communicative than individuals with
depression. Even exhibiting different absolute values, the
curves obtained from each group, expressing their behav-
ioral variability in percentage in relation to themselves, can
be superimposed over the curves obtained for all other
groups.
This nding suggests that the expression of human be-
havior is self-similar, a characteristic compatible with the
hypothesis of the presence of self-organized criticality.
Once we have admitted the presence of SOCas an orga-
nizational principle of social behavior, the next question to
be answeredis howthese social groups evolve to this critical
state. The emergence of SOC does not depend of any exter-
nal or centralized control, and therefore my proposal is that
the free expression of desires, judgments, and decisions about how
to behave is sufcient to generate such patterns. In other words,
the presence of robust patterns of self-organization does
not require any restriction of freedom nor imposing any
external control on these human social groups, and there-
fore the free expression of spontaneous behaviors in these
groups is sufcient to allowthe emergence of self-organized
criticality.
As I discuss later, these data do not demonstrate or cor-
roborate the existence of free will. Rather, they mean that
the presence of free will, working in each individual and
expressed in different forms due to the presence of peculiar
mental states, can lead to the emergence of coherent pat-
terns of social behaviors that can be statistically described.
Free will, therefore, could be incorporated by physical
theories as a factor involved in the genesis of complex nat-
ural phenomena.
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Figure 2. This gure, as a loglogplot, illustrates, but does
not exactly reproduce, the superposition of the curves ob-
tained when the frequency of scores in all scales is plotted
fromthe most to least frequent one. This is a modication
of original data where each diagnostic group (depression,
mania, schizophrenia, and controls) is represented by one
line. In the original studies, the lines are almost coinci-
dent and the different groups cannot be identied. For a
detailed description about how the data were analyzed
see Piqueira et al. (1999) and Ramos, Sassi, and Piqueira
(2011).
MENTAL DISORDERS AND FREE WILL
At this point, I have introduced the idea that collective be-
havior of individuals with very different mental conditions
can be statistically described. I also have argued that free
will, a mental phenomenon, is involved in the genesis of
SOC, a physical concept. The idea that free will works in
different ways in different psychiatric disorders, however,
deserves further consideration.
Consider that we frequently have the sensation that the
functioning of our mind is not completely under our own
control all the time. The experience of losing self-control is
not rare in normal people submitted to certain conditions.
Fear and love, for example, can be accompanied by the
sensation that these feelings dominate our capacity of think
and act. This phenomenon seems remarkably more intense
in mental disorders.
Depression is not a simple extreme variation of normal
sadness. It is a sustained state of lack of energy and moti-
vation, with an incapacity to feel happiness and hope (Pae
et al. 2009). There is evidence that depression is genetically
inuencedandthat its symptoms are strongly (although not
completely) invariant among different cultures. Individuals
with depression usually have the same kind of beliefs and
desires. They believe that they are not capable to cope with
life situations, they see life as valueless, they have no hope
to change this situation, and, unfortunately, many of them
believe that suicide is the only way to escape. During a
depressive state, these mental contents are not the logical
consequence of a neutral reection about the world. After
remission, former depressive patients recognize that such
ideas had occurred during a mental state qualitatively dif-
ferent from their own usual periods of sadness. During de-
pression, something modies the will and distorts the way
persons usually process information.
Mania is characterized by an acceleration of mental
functioning with beliefs of increased powers and capaci-
ties. The individual believes that he or she is much more
important and inuent than he or she actually is. Loss of
adequate self-criticism leading to increased money spend-
ing and sexual activity completes the picture (Mansell and
Pedley 2008). Like depression, mania cannot be described
as a specic disease of free will but I am considering that,
among many other symptoms, these patients have peculiar
ways to make decisions. Patients are convinced that they
are consciously and freely deciding how to act but their
behavior has several stereotypical components that allow
the reliable use of pre-determined diagnostic criteria. By
stereotyped behavior I mean that individuals with depres-
sion or mania make decisions, evaluate situations, and act
in very similar ways. These patterns are robust and it is
possible to compare symptoms, response to treatment, and
outcomes of individuals from different cultures and social
backgrounds.
In schizophrenia we nd even more dramatic exam-
ples. Individuals with this diagnosis can have experiences
like delusional intuitions, dened as the unmotivated and
sudden belief that there is a special meaning in everything
happening around like a plan against them. Another exam-
ple of qualitative change in the way these patients perceive
the environment is the delusional perception that refers to a
strange, idiosyncratic, and self-referential meaning given to
apparently indifferent things or situations, without reason
(Fuchs 2005). The experience of having their own thoughts,
wills, and decisions controlled from outside or that alien
thoughts are introduced in their own mind also occurs
often.
I briey presented these psychopathological concepts
to argue that the expression of what we call free will can
exhibit intense variations in different conditions and even
in the same individual in different epochs. These disorders
seem to arise from primarily biological mechanisms that
induce stereotyped patterns of desires and beliefs. Biolog-
ical mechanisms are not the unique determinant of psy-
chiatric conditions, but, for the sake of objectivity, I avoid
discussing other clinical conditions that seem much more
strongly linked to cultural traits.
2
For this discussion, it is important to notice that al-
though the development of a mental disorder seems to
2. One famous example of this kind of mental disorder is koro,
a syndrome characterized by a fear that the genitals or breasts
will retract into the body and cause death (Buckle et al. 2007). Al-
though considered a Chinese culture-bound condition, the koro
phenomenon has been reported also among diverse ethnic and re-
ligious groups in Asia and Africa.
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Biophysical Models of Human Behavior
severely change the expression of free will, the clinical ex-
perience shows that the inuence of previous experiences
andpersonality traits remains identiable as determinant of
the patients prognosis. The appearance of a mental disor-
der, like these I am presenting here, does not create entirely
newindividuals. Although associated with intense changes
of previously existent cognitive, perceptive, and affective
processes, some degree of freedom in decision-making pro-
cesses is preserved in psychiatric disorders.
FREE WILL, SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, AND PHYSICAL
THEORIES
Once we have admitted the hypothesis that social human
behavior can be studied through a kind of physical formal-
ism, the next step is to introduce the concept of free will
in this model. As I already stated, I am proposing to dis-
cuss free will indirectly through the observation of social
interactions. Returning to the sand-pile paradigm, my pro-
posal is equivalent to discussing the behavior of one single
sand grain even though a complete understanding of all
factors inuencing the state of this grain is possible only by
considering what is happening in the entire pile.
The parallelism between the behavior of human groups
and other physical systems requires, as exactly as possible,
a description of all the factors involved in the model. In the
case of sandpiles, the physical forces of gravity and attrition
and the size and shape of the grains are the elements deter-
mining the system behavior. In the case of human behavior,
interpersonal relationships, personality traits, neurobiolog-
ical mechanisms, and capacity for communication should
be determinants for the emergence of patterns compatible
with the presence of SOC. My proposal is that free will is
the ultimate expression of the interaction of all these biological,
cognitive, and social factors, and therefore it is also involved in
the self-organization of the entire social system.
The experimental strategy explored here requires the
simplication of extremely intricate phenomena to a more
simple and workable form, but it does not mean that many
other elements not included in the model are not important
to the genesis of social behavior. Although highly reduc-
tionist, a hypothesis like SOC to explain human behavior
removes a priori incompatibilities inreconciling, inthe same
explanatory model, the existence of free will and the emer-
gence of predictable collective patterns of behavior. More
specically, the SOC model allows us to quantitatively un-
derstand the mechanism by which global events locally af-
fect the state of a single individual and, reciprocally, how
individual changes lead to global effects.
Local inuences mean that people living close to me
affect my decisions more intensely than those with whom
I keep more distant contact. Global effects mean that the
actions of a single individual can lead to changes in the
entire social system in unpredictable ways. These concepts
are quite obvious in social sciences, but the idea that it is
possible to create quantitative models of these phenomena
is probably new. According to the SOC model, for example,
it is possible to discern that global changes provoked by
individual actions are less frequent than small local effects
provoked by equivalent actions, but the relationship among
the probabilities of occurrence of these phenomena must
follow a power law.
Examining free will from this perspective runs the risk
of missing the essentially mental character of its conception,
but it has the advantage of allowing the study of its causal
capacities in a physical system to be more rigorously de-
scribed. Although robust, the patterns of self-organization
that emerge fromsocial systems neither prove the existence
of free will nor allow its direct assessment in a isolated in-
dividual. My argument is simply that if free will exists and
if it is endowed with causal capacity, its effects should be
statistically described in social systems.
It is important to remember that the patterns of social
behavior I am using to found my hypothesis exist in the
eyes of the observer and I cannot say that this approach
is the correct one or even whether it is the unique pos-
sible construct capable of quantitatively explaining social
behavior. The denition of levels of organization and com-
plexity, like other scientic hypothesis such as the classi-
cation of species of animals or stars, represents a partic-
ular view of the nature, which can always be revised and
improved.
The identicationof SOCis only possible fromthe study
of groups of individuals, but this hypothesis has impli-
cations for psychological theories as well. For example, I
can say that the impossibility of predicting the actions of
a specic individual in the near future is a consequence of
the stochastic nature of the entire social system and not a
limitation of the explanatory power of psychological mod-
els (Ramos et al. 2011). In terms of clinical investigation,
it would be possible, in theory, to quantitatively evaluate
the impact of changes occurring in an individual, via psy-
chotherapy, for example, on the behavior of local groups
like families and small communities.
It is important to notice that the idea of individual free-
dom is problematic even at a cognitive level. There is evi-
dence that the basic processes necessary for goal pursuit
preparing and directing instrumental actions and assessing
the rewardvalue of the goalcan operate outside conscious
awareness (Custers and Aarts 2010). Studying freely cho-
sen nger movements, Libet and colleagues (1983) found
that although the decision of moving the nger precedes
the action, the preparation for movement in the brain is
observable before the moment people consciously decided
to act. They concluded that cerebral initiation of a sponta-
neous, freely voluntary act can begin unconsciously, that is,
before there is any (at least recallable) subjective awareness
that a decision to act has already been initiated cerebrally
(623).
These arguments do not exclude the possibility that the
causal properties of free will, like other mental states, are
illusionary. Individual behavior could be completely de-
termined by biological reactions to the environment, and
mental states could be empty reections provoked by the
observation of one persons reactions without any capacity
to causally act in the real world. In this case, modeling hu-
man society as a Brownian system, where social interactions
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would be the simple result of random encounters among
people, would be more appropriate.
3
Systems constituted
by particles in suspension in liquids exhibiting Brownian
movements can also be completely described in statistical
terms, but they are not considered complex in the sense that
they do not lead to the emergence of newunexpected states.
As such, they do not seem to offer a better way to model
human behavior.
Also, denying the causal properties of mental states
is not compatible with most successful research strate-
gies adopted in modern psychology and psychiatry. In the
course of recent decades of psychotherapy and psychophar-
macology, techniques that work via changes inmental states
have shown increasing efcacy, as demonstrated by the re-
duction of mental disorder morbidity. This strongly sug-
gests that denying the causal properties of mental states
cannot be correct.
IMPLICATIONS
In relation to social phenomena in general, the SOC hy-
pothesis has at least two implications. First, it allows us to
understand how local actions performed by one or a few
individuals can lead to signicant changes in entire social
systems. This model suggests that such an effect is unpre-
dictable, and consequently uncontrollable. The emergence
of large social effects from small local interventions would
require a relatively infrequent coincidence of global condi-
tions characteristic of a critically organized system where
small changes, like the adding of a single grain, would lead
to big avalanches.
Second, it is reasonable to suppose that the emergence
of SOC in social systems is only possible in the presence of
relative individual freedom. Social systems based on limita-
tions of individual expressions may have different systemic
behaviors. By individual expression I mean that this kind
of self-organization emerges from the free interchanging of
information among individuals. The imposition of limita-
tions in spreading information fromone individual to other
can hinder or prevent the emergence of SOC and, therefore,
reduce the possibility that the actions of one person provoke
large social effects.
Although the clinical evidence presented in this article
is not sufcient to support the extension of these ndings
to larger social groups, it is hard to resist the temptation
to apply these observations to real societies. According to
this hypothesis, societies with higher levels of individual
freedomwouldnaturallyevolve to anSOC-compatible state
without the necessity of central control. The maintenance of
such a situation would demand less effort in comparison
withother societies withlower levels of individual freedom.
In a dictatorship, for example, too many resources would be
necessary to control the information ow and prevent the
emergence of bigger social, political, or cultural movements.
3. Brownian motion is the seemingly random movement of par-
ticles suspended in a uid. This term can also denominate the
mathematical model used to describe such random movements
(Humphries et al. 2010).
These movements would emerge more frequently in free
societies because their occurrence demands the presence of
a self-organized critical state that naturally allows global
transformations.
Although it is impossible to denitively demonstrate its
validity, I believe that the SOC hypothesis is of heuristic
value because it allows us to improve our understanding
of human behavior by admitting the possibility of incor-
porating, in the same quantitative model, both social and
psychological causal instances. In this model, psychological
and neurobiological characteristics would be equivalent to
the properties of individual sandgrains like shape, size, and
attrition rate, while social events would be represented by
the changes of the entire sandpile state. This hypothesis is
compatible with the widely accepted assumption that men-
tal states causally interact with physical, biological, and cul-
tural elements, leading to the emergence of unpredictable
social phenomena.
At this point, at least one big question can be discussed.
Am I free to want everything I imagine? My answer is yes.
However, when I decide to implement my decisions in a so-
cial network, other factors start to affect the nal expression
of my will. Social inuences in the form of moral consider-
ations and the evaluation of the signicance of my acts in
terms of cultural values and social contexts modulate my
psychological processes and, consequently, the expression
of my will. Naturally, the idea that an individuals self is
modulated by external factors is not new. Similar concepts
are found in psychoanalysis and political theories, for ex-
ample. However, these approaches usually overvalue the
role of either cognitive or sociologic instances in the gen-
esis of individual acts and miss the global picture where
all these inuences should be simultaneously assessed and
eventually measured.
The simplication of such complex situations that I am
proposing in this article aims only to direct attention to an
intermediary level (not too detailed in psychological nor in
sociological terms) in order to more clearly expose a subtle
but powerful natural phenomenon.
The SOC hypothesis is compatible with the subjective
impression that individual choices emerge under the inu-
ence of psychological, biological, social, and cultural inu-
ences. At the same time, these choices are associated with
the internal sensation that all this process is part of the in-
dividuals self. When I am depressed, in a psychotic state
due to a biological process, or full of enthusiasmfor a social
(political or cultural) event, my judgments and decisions
change and I can do things that I normally would not do.
Considering that I feel these different versions of myself as
still me, I candescribe free will as the cognitive experience
of having made an autonomous decision despite not being
fully aware of all interactions between my brainmind pro-
cess and the external information necessary for an adequate
contextualization of this action.
I hope that the recontextualization of free will I am
proposing here can be useful by indicating new experi-
mental ways of studying this and other mental phenom-
ena in social contexts. I also hope that the advantages of
42 ajob Neuroscience July-September, Volume 2, Number 3, 2011
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Biophysical Models of Human Behavior
adopting this more comprehensive framework can over-
come its unavoidable limitations.
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