In nature, simple rules give rise to complex behavior. A single ant follows pheromone trails, but an ant colony collectively optimizes food-gathering strategies, adjusts to environmental changes, and builds intricate structures—none of which any individual ant understands. Intelligence emerges not from a single unit, but from the interactions... See more

Pretty soon after cells started joining together to form animals, some of the animals discovered that they could go up another level of emergence and form even bigger giants made up of multiple animals. If you look around, you’ll see them everywhere—schools of fish, packs of wolves, colonies of ants, waddles of penguins. Groups like these represent... See more

collective neuroscience involves reckoning with the science of complex systems, where causation is not linear but looping, and social and neuronal structures mesh in unpredictable ways.