The field of study of complex systems considers that the dynamics of complex systems are founded on universal principles that may be used to describe a great variety of scientific and technological approaches of different types of natural, artificial, and social systems. Several authors have...

Mixed hidden Markov models have been recently defined in the literature as an extension of hidden Markov models for dealing with population studies. The notion of mixed hidden Markov models is particularly relevant for modeling longitudinal data collected during clinical trials, especially when...

In the study of epileptic seizure or epileptic attack, a strategy receiving increased attention is the use of nonlinear methods in detecting the earliest dynamical changes preceding seizures. The methods usually consider continuous EEG measurements from epileptic patients to predict and...

In the present work, we show that appropriate information-theory tools based on the wavelet transform (relative wavelet energy; normalized total wavelet entropy, H; generalized wavelet complexity, CW), when applied to tonic–clonic epileptic EEG data, provide one with valuable insights into the...

The processing of information by the brain is reflected in dynamical changes of the electrical activity in (i) time, (ii) frequency, and (iii) space. Therefore, the concomitant studies require methods capable of describing the qualitative variation of the signal in both time and frequency. The...

The traditional way of analyzing brain electrical activity, on the basis of Electroencephalography (EEG) records, relies mainly on visual inspection and years of training. Although it is quite useful, of course, one has to acknowledge its subjective nature that hardly allows for a systematic...

Since traditional electrical brain signal analysis is mostly qualitative, the development of new quantitative methods is crucial for restricting the subjectivity in the study of brain signals. These methods are particularly fruitful when they are strongly correlated with intuitive physical...

This introductory article presents the special Discussion and Debate volume 'From black swans to dragon-kings, is there life beyond power laws?'. We summarize and put in perspective the contributions into three main themes: (i) mechanisms for dragon-kings, (ii) detection of dragon-kings and...