Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36266789›Full record

ArticlePhysical review. E2022

Emergence of local irreversibility in complex interacting systems.

Christopher W Lynn, Caroline M Holmes, William Bialek, David J Schwab

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Physical review. E, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Koopman mode decomposition of thermodynamic dissipation in nonlinear Langevin dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  3. Multilevel irreversibility reveals higher-order organization of nonequilibrium interactions in human brain dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Christopher W LynnInitiative for the Theoretical Sciences, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, New York 10016, USA.
Caroline M HolmesJoseph Henry Laboratories of Physics and Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
William BialekInitiative for the Theoretical Sciences, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, New York 10016, USA.
David J SchwabInitiative for the Theoretical Sciences, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, New York 10016, USA.

Funding

Coarse-graining approaches to networks, learning, and behaviorR01EB026943 · NIBIB · UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO · PI BIALEK, WILLIAM, PALMER, STEPHANIE E · 2018 to 2020
$1.1M
NIBIB NIH HHS R01 EB026943
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Living systems are fundamentally irreversible, breaking detailed balance and establishing an arrow of time. But how does the evident arrow of time for a whole system arise from the interactions among its multiple elements? We show that the local evidence for the arrow of time, which is the entropy production for thermodynamic systems, can be decomposed. First, it can be split into two components: an independent term reflecting the dynamics of individual elements and an interaction term driven by the dependencies among elements. Adapting tools from nonequilibrium physics, we further decompose the interaction term into contributions from pairs of elements, triplets, and higher-order terms. We illustrate our methods on models of cellular sensing and logical computations, as well as on patterns of neural activity in the retina as it responds to visual inputs. We find that neural activity can define the arrow of time even when the visual inputs do not, and that the dominant contribution to this breaking of detailed balance comes from interactions among pairs of neurons.

Identifiers

PMID36266789
PMCPMC9751845

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceTDM
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.