This will be an online talk using Zoom, follow the Tuesday Complexity Seminar Online link. 

The cognitive functions of human and nonhuman primates rely on the dynamic interplay of distributed neural assemblies. As such, it seems unlikely that conscious cognition can be supported by macroscopic brain dynamics at the proximity of equilibrium. In this talk, I will present recent results on the relationship between brain dynamics, thermodynamic equilibrium and temporal symmetry, all leading to the same conclusion: conscious awareness only is compatible with irreversible large-scale neural dynamics, while unconscious brain states can be supported by activity that looks the same after temporal inversion. These results were obtained using standard methods from stochastic thermodynamics, and also following a novel framework based on training and testing a deep convolutional neural network to detect temporally inverted signals, representing an interesting new tool of wide applicability to other systems.