Collective phenomena: Absent Soviet friends

Modelling collective phenomena in neuroscience

This paper shows how concepts and tools borrowed from statistical physics might be useful for modelling biological systems. This is illustrated by specific examples taken from the study of neural dynamics. The relevance for neuroscience of the notion of 'collective phenomena', for which statistical physics gives appropriate modelling tools, is discussed. Short-term memory is probably the simple...

Collective phenomena in intracellular processes.

Intracellular transport and cytoskeletal organization are the result of an interaction between elastic filaments and force generation by motor proteins. The observed phenomena are still too complex for a complete theoretical description. Studies on simple model systems reveal interesting collective phenomena which can be understood on the basis of driven stochastic processes far from equilibrium.

Phase Transitions and Collective Phenomena

Collective phenomena in defect crystals

We investigate the effects of interactions between substitutional defects on the properties of defect crystals at low temperatures, where defect motion is governed by quantum effects. Both thermal and dynamical properties are considered. The influence of interactions on defect motion is described via a collective effect. Our treatment is semiclassical in the sense that we analyze collective eff...

Atomic Condensates Collective Phenomena in Ultracold Gases