Understanding Human Behavior - Video

Collective organization is everywhere, both around us and within us. Our brains are composed of billions of interconnected cells communicating with chemical and electrical signals. We are integrated in our own collective human society. Elsewhere in the natural world hundreds of thousands of blind army ants coordinate a massive raid across the rainforest floor, a flock of birds arcs and ripples while descending to roost, and a fish school convulses, as if it is a single entity, when attacked by a predator. How can animal groups move in unison? How does individual behavior produce group dynamics? Do animal groups function as a “collective mind”? From locust swarms to bird flocks, from consensus decision-making in fish and among humans, Couzin will discuss how, and why, coordinated collective behavior is so pervasive within the natural world.

Harvard professor and business author Yochai Benkler questions the centuries-old practice of managing people through incentive structures

The heart’s electric currents have been known for one hundred years, but three-quarters of a century later, the ECG is still giving up its secrets. Buchman explains the basic ECG signal and its relationship with the function of the human heart. He then turns to complex systems science to discover hidden structure within the ECG. These lie in frequencies (akin to musical tones); in variability (akin to the change in directions of a walker choosing not-quite-random steps); and in network design (akin to adding/losing elements of a power grid). Finally, he explores the ways in which the ECG might point towards the existence of fundamental laws of biology. Armed with these fundamental laws, we ask how complex systems science might allow us to guide care in the intensive care unit.