ArticlePLoS computational biology2020
Reconciling emergences: An information-theoretic approach to identify causal emergence in multivariate data.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers.
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Who cites it
52 citing papers in PubMed.
- From genes to germ layers: virtual twins of gastruloids.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2026Review
- Evolving reservoir computers reveal bidirectional coupling between predictive power and emergent dynamics.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- What is emergence, after all?PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Towards an informational account of interpersonal coordination.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Quantifying emergent complexity.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Reply to 'Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience as collections of practices'.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Whole-to-parts causation mechanism.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Intrinsic units: identifying a system's causal grain.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Emergent multiscale organisation of neural dynamics fragments in anaesthesia.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Identifying and investigating emergent behaviour in neural systems.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Null models for comparing information decomposition across complex systems.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Toward a unified taxonomy of information dynamics via Integrated Information Decomposition.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Consilience in Causation: Causal Emergence Is Found Across Measures of Causation.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Associative conditioning in gene regulatory network models increases integrative causal emergence.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Accurate Transcription Factor Activity Inference to Decipher Cell Identity from Single-Cell Transcriptomic Data with MetaTF.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Capturing the emergent dynamical structure in biophysical neural models.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Information-Theoretical Analysis of Team Dynamics in Football Matches.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- As One and Many: Relating Individual and Emergent Group-Level Generative Models in Active Inference.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Toward aitiopoietic cognition: bridging the evolutionary divide between biological and machine-learned causal systems.Frontiers in cognition · 2025Review
- Now is the time: operationalizing generative neurophenomenology through interpersonal methods.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
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Abstract
The broad concept of emergence is instrumental in various of the most challenging open scientific questions-yet, few quantitative theories of what constitutes emergent phenomena have been proposed. This article introduces a formal theory of causal emergence in multivariate systems, which studies the relationship between the dynamics of parts of a system and macroscopic features of interest. Our theory provides a quantitative definition of downward causation, and introduces a complementary modality of emergent behaviour-which we refer to as causal decoupling. Moreover, the theory allows practical criteria that can be efficiently calculated in large systems, making our framework applicable in a range of scenarios of practical interest. We illustrate our findings in a number of case studies, including Conway's Game of Life, Reynolds' flocking model, and neural activity as measured by electrocorticography.
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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.