ArticlePloS one2007
Order in spontaneous behavior.
Article in PloS one, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers.
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Who cites it
70 citing papers in PubMed.
- Behavioral sequences across multiple animal species in the wild share common structural features.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Symbolic Activity and Agency.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2025Review
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- Peripheral NOD-like receptor deficient inflammatory macrophages trigger neutrophil infiltration into the brain disrupting daytime locomotion.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Approximations of algorithmic and structural complexity validate cognitive-behavioral experimental results.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2022Article
- Reconstructing the Intrinsic Statistical Properties of Intermittent Locomotion Through Corrections for Boundary Effects.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2021Article
- Collective action or individual choice: Spontaneity and individuality contribute to decision-making in Drosophila.PloS one · 2021Article
- Internal-Clock Models and Misguided Views of Mechanistic Explanations: A Reply to Eckard & Lattal (2020).Perspectives on behavior science · 2020Article
- Functional advantages of Lévy walks emerging near a critical point.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Insights from the study of complex systems for the ecology and evolution of animal populations.Current zoology · 2020Article
- Optimal searching behaviour generated intrinsically by the central pattern generator for locomotion.eLife · 2019Article
- Multi-stability with ambiguous visual stimuli in Drosophila orientation behavior.PLoS biology · 2018Article
- Abolishment of Spontaneous Flight Turns in Visually Responsive Drosophila.Current biology : CB · 2018Article
- Mind Control: How Parasites Manipulate Cognitive Functions in Their Insect Hosts.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Media Portrayal of a Landmark Neuroscience Experiment on Free Will.Science and engineering ethics · 2017Article
- Control of Movement Initiation Underlies the Development of Balance.Current biology : CB · 2017Article
- Anomalous diffusion on the servosphere: A potential tool for detecting inherent organismal movement patterns.PloS one · 2017Article
- Variability in individual activity bursts improves ant foraging success.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2016Article
- Generalized CNS arousal: An elementary force within the vertebrate nervous system.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2016Review
- Signatures of chaos in animal search patterns.Scientific reports · 2016Article
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Brains are usually described as input/output systems: they transform sensory input into motor output. However, the motor output of brains (behavior) is notoriously variable, even under identical sensory conditions. The question of whether this behavioral variability merely reflects residual deviations due to extrinsic random noise in such otherwise deterministic systems or an intrinsic, adaptive indeterminacy trait is central for the basic understanding of brain function. Instead of random noise, we find a fractal order (resembling Lévy flights) in the temporal structure of spontaneous flight maneuvers in tethered Drosophila fruit flies. Lévy-like probabilistic behavior patterns are evolutionarily conserved, suggesting a general neural mechanism underlying spontaneous behavior. Drosophila can produce these patterns endogenously, without any external cues. The fly's behavior is controlled by brain circuits which operate as a nonlinear system with unstable dynamics far from equilibrium. These findings suggest that both general models of brain function and autonomous agents ought to include biologically relevant nonlinear, endogenous behavior-initiating mechanisms if they strive to realistically simulate biological brains or out-compete other agents.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.