Towards a unified taxonomy of information dynamics via Integrated Information Decomposition
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Our ability to understand and control complex systems of many interacting parts remains limited. A key challenge is that we still don’t know how best to describe – and quantify – the many-to-many dynamical interactions that characterise their complexity. To address this limitation, we introduce the mathematical framework of Integrated Information Decomposition, or ΦID. ΦID provides a comprehensive framework to disentangle and characterise the information dynamics of complex multivariate systems. On the theoretical side, ΦID reveals the existence of previously unreported modes of collective information flow, providing tools to express well-known measures of information transfer, information storage, and dynamical complexity as aggregates of these modes, thereby overcoming some of their known theoretical shortcomings. On the empirical side, we validate our theoretical results with computational models and examples from over 1,000 biological, social, physical, and synthetic dynamical systems. Altogether, ΦID improves our understanding of the behaviour of widely-used measures for characterising complex systems across disciplines, and leads to new more refined analyses of dynamical complexity.
Date Issued
2025-09-30
Date Acceptance
2025-07-17
Citation
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA, 2025, 122 (39)
ISSN
0027-8424
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Journal / Book Title
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA
Volume
122
Issue
39
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2025 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).
License URL
Identifier
10.1093/biomethods/bpaf060
Subjects
Fluorescent Timer
Tocky
Foxp3
Nr4a3
T cell receptor signalling
flow cytometry
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN e2423297122
Date Publish Online
2025-09-22