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Ryan Collison

I write about cool science and share it here.

Consciousness as topological complexity in neural state space

Topological Signatures of Consciousness: What Shape Is Awareness?

Series: Topological Data Analysis in Neuroscience | Part: 4 of 9 What does it look like when you’re conscious versus when you’re not? Not phenomenologically—we know what it feels like. The question is: what does consciousness look like in the geometry of brain activity? Can you see the

Eleven-dimensional topological cavities in neural tissue visualization

The Blue Brain Project: Topology of Neural Circuits

Series: Topological Data Analysis in Neuroscience | Part: 3 of 9 In 2017, a team of neuroscientists and mathematicians published a paper that should have broken the internet. They’d discovered that the rat cortex—not an abstract model, not a metaphor, but actual biological tissue—was computing in eleven-dimensional

Barcode visualization of persistent homology showing topological features across scales

Persistent Homology 101: Finding Features That Matter

Series: Topological Data Analysis in Neuroscience | Part: 2 of 9 You have a cloud of points. Maybe they’re neurons firing at different rates. Maybe they’re fMRI voxels correlated at different strengths. Maybe they’re positions of particles in a simulation. Doesn’t matter. You have points in high-

High-dimensional neural manifold with persistent topological features

The Shape of Thought: How Topologists Are Decoding the Brain

Series: Topological Data Analysis in Neuroscience | Part: 1 of 9 Your brain isn’t a computer. It’s a shape. Not metaphorically. Literally. The patterns of electrical activity rippling through your neural tissue at this exact moment—as you read these words, as meaning crystallizes, as understanding dawns—have a

Molecular assembly pathway ascending from chemistry to cognition to culture

Synthesis: What Assembly Theory Teaches About the Construction of Meaning

Synthesis: What Assembly Theory Teaches About the Construction of Meaning Series: Assembly Theory | Part: 9 of 9 Lee Cronin wants to measure the complexity of molecules by counting the steps required to build them. This sounds like chemistry—and it is. But the implications reach far beyond the laboratory bench.

Dual visualization showing assembly construction and free energy landscape converging

Where Assembly Meets Free Energy: Two Theories of What It Takes to Persist

Where Assembly Meets Free Energy: Two Theories of What It Takes to Persist Series: Assembly Theory | Part: 8 of 9 Two theorists are circling the same question from opposite directions. Lee Cronin, a chemist, wants to know what makes a molecule too complex to arise by chance. Karl Friston, a

Exoplanet with mass spectrometer analyzing atmospheric samples for high assembly molecules

Detecting Life on Other Worlds: Assembly Theory's Cosmic Implications

Detecting Life on Other Worlds: Assembly Theory's Cosmic Implications Series: Assembly Theory | Part: 7 of 9 The Viking landers touched down on Mars in 1976 with a simple mission: find life. They carried sophisticated instruments designed to detect metabolic signatures—feeding bacteria radioactive carbon-14, watching for labeled