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The burst coding hypothesis posits that the occurrence of sudden high-frequency patterns of action potentials constitutes a salient syllable of the neural code. Many neurons, however, do not produce clearly demarcated bursts, an observation invoked to rule out the pervasiveness of this coding scheme across brain areas and cell types. Here we ask how detrimental ambiguous spike patterns, those that are neither clearly bursts nor isolated spikes, are for neuronal information transfer. We addressed this question using information theory and computational simulations. By quantifying how information transmission depends on firing statistics, we found that the information transmitted is not strongly influenced by the presence of clearly demarcated modes in the interspike interval distribution, a feature often used to identify the presence of burst coding. Instead, we found that neurons having unimodal interval distributions were still able to ascribe different meanings to bursts and isolated spikes. In this regime, information transmission depends on dynamical properties of the synapses as well as the length and relative frequency of bursts. Furthermore, we found that common metrics used to quantify burstiness were unable to predict the degree with which bursts could be used to carry information. Our results provide guiding principles for the implementation of coding strategies based on spike-timing patterns, and show that even unimodal firing statistics can be consistent with a bivariate neural code.

BACKGROUND: The interaction between people is one of the usual daily activities. For this purpose, people mainly connect with others, using their voice. Voices act as the auditory stimuli on the brain during a conversation. OBJECTIVE: In this research, we analyze the relationship between the brains’ activities of subjects during a conversation. METHODS: Since human voice transfers information from one subject to another, we used information theory for our analysis. We investigated the alterations of Shannon entropy of electroencephalography (EEG) signals for subjects during a conversation. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that the alterations in the information contents of the EEG signals for the listeners and speakers are correlated. Therefore, we concluded that the brains’ activities of both subjects are linked. CONCLUSION: Our results can be expanded to analyze the coupling among other physiological signals of subjects (such as heart rate) during the conversation.

As birds migrate in a linear formation, the frequent exchange of leader-follower in the Ibises can extend the formation flight time. In this paper, we utilize the information theory to analyze the underlying mechanism of the coordination and cooperation within the Ibises. To this end, we examine and quantify the dynamic characteristics of the information transfer in a group of Ibises at the individual level. Firstly, the local transfer entropy is employed to quantify the local dynamic information transfer during the migration of the Ibises. Therefore, we provide lucid explanations of how Ibis individually influences the group decision through information transfer to generate consistent collective behavior. The local active information storage is used to represent the memory of the Ibis. The relationship between the consistency of the collective behavior and the memory of the Ibis is obtained by calculating the mutual information between the historical state sequences and the future state of the Ibis. Finally, based on the dynamic information transfer, the relationship between the group memory and the consistent collective behavior, we effectively captured the relationship between the excitation and convergence of the Ibis’ collective behavior, and the variance of entropy is obtained.

Information theory provides maximum possible information transfer over communication channels, including neural channels recently emerged as remarkable for disruptive nano-networking applications. Information theory was successfully applied to quantify the ability of biological sensory neurons to transfer the information from dynamic stimuli. However, a little of information theory has been subjected to quantify the reliability of neuro-transmission between synaptically coupled neurons. Neuro-transmission, regarded as molecular synaptic communication, relays information between neurons and significantly affects the overall brain processing performance. In this study, we use concepts from information theory to provide the framework based on closed-form expressions that quantify the information rate allowing assessment of neuro-transmission when the parameters are provided for any type of neurons. Considering Poissonian statistics and the rate coding model of neural communication, we show how the information transferred between cortical neurons depend on the molecular, physiological and morphological diversity of cells, the firing rate, and the synaptic wiring. With synaptic redundancy, we infer the ability of an isolated post-synaptic neuron to reliably convey information encoded in the spike train from a pre-synaptic neuron. Estimating information rate between neurons primarily serves in the evaluation of the overall performance of biological neural nano-networks and the development of artificial nano-networks.

The control-coding (CC) capacity of dynamical decision models (DMs) is defined as the maximum amount of information transfer per unit time from its inputs to its outputs, called CC rate $R$ in bits...

All systems for processing signals, both artificial and within animals, must obey fundamental statistical laws for how information can be processed. We discuss here recent results using information theory that provide a blueprint for building circuits where signals can be read-out without information loss. Many properties that are necessary to build information-preserving circuits are actually observed in real neurons, at least approximately. One such property is the use of logistic nonlinearity for relating inputs to neural response probability. Such nonlinearities are common in neural and intracellular networks. With this nonlinearity type, there is a linear combination of neural responses that is guaranteed to preserve Shannon information contained in the response of a neural population, no matter how many neurons it contains. This read-out measure is related to a classic quantity known as the population vector that has been quite successful in relating neural responses to animal behavior in a wide variety of cases. Nevertheless, the population vector did not withstand the scrutiny of detailed information-theoretical analyses that showed that it discards substantial amounts of information contained in the responses of a neural population. We discuss recent theoretical results showing how to modify the population vector expression to make it 'information-preserving', and what is necessary in terms of neural circuit organization to allow for lossless information transfer. Implementing these strategies within artificial systems is likely to increase their efficiency, especially for brain-machine interfaces.

The measures of information transfer which correspond to non-additive entropies have intensively been studied in previous decades. The majority of the work includes the ones belonging to the Sharma–Mittal entropy class, such as the Rényi, the Tsallis, the Landsberg–Vedral and the Gaussian entropies. All of the considerations follow the same approach, mimicking some of the various and mutually equivalent definitions of Shannon information measures, and the information transfer is quantified by an appropriately defined measure of mutual information, while the maximal information transfer is considered as a generalized channel capacity. However, all of the previous approaches fail to satisfy at least one of the ineluctable properties which a measure of (maximal) information transfer should satisfy, leading to counterintuitive conclusions and predicting nonphysical behavior even in the case of very simple communication channels. This paper fills the gap by proposing two parameter measures named the α-q-mutual information and the α-q-capacity. In addition to standard Shannon approaches, special cases of these measures include the α-mutual information and the α-capacity, which are well established in the information theory literature as measures of additive Rényi information transfer, while the cases of the Tsallis, the Landsberg–Vedral and the Gaussian entropies can also be accessed by special choices of the parameters α and q. It is shown that, unlike the previous definition, the α-q-mutual information and the α-q-capacity satisfy the set of properties, which are stated as axioms, by which they reduce to zero in the case of totally destructive channels and to the (maximal) input Sharma–Mittal entropy in the case of perfect transmission, which is consistent with the maximum likelihood detection error. In addition, they are non-negative and less than or equal to the input and the output Sharma–Mittal entropies, in general. Thus, unlike the previous approaches, the proposed (maximal) information transfer measures do not manifest nonphysical behaviors such as sub-capacitance or super-capacitance, which could qualify them as appropriate measures of the Sharma–Mittal information transfer.

Developing an information theory of quantitative genetics David J. Galas, James Kunert-Graf and Nikita A. Sakhanenko Pacific Northwest Research Institute, Seattle Washington, 98122 USA Quantitative genetics has evolved dramatically in the century since its foundation, and the modern proliferation of genetic data both in quantity and in type now enables new kinds of analysis beyond the scope of its theoretical foundations. We have begun laying the foundations of an alternative formulation of quantitative genetics based on information theory since it can provide sensitive and unbiased measures of statistical dependencies among variables, as well as a natural mathematical language for an alternative description of quantitative genetics. After all, genetics is fundamentally the science of information transfer between generations. Earlier work has applied information theory to descriptions of evolution and some aspects of population genetics. In our previous work we examined the information content of discrete functions, which are useful in describing genetic relations and applied this formalism to the analysis of genetic data. We describe a set of relationships that both unifies the information measures for these discrete functions and uses them to express key genetic relationships in genotype and phenotype data. We present information-based measures of the genetic quantities of penetrance, heritability and degrees of statistical epistasis. We analyze two- and three-variable dependencies for independently segregating variants, which captures a range of phenomena including genetic interactions, and two phenotype pleiotropy. Note however that this formalism applies naturally to multi-variable interactions and higher-order complex dependencies as well, and can be extended to account for population structure, genetic linkage and non-randomly segregating markers. We discuss our progress towards laying the groundwork for a full formulation of quantitative genetics based in information theory.

A biological reaction network may serve multiple purposes, processing more than one input and impacting downstream processes via more than one output. These networks operate in a dynamic cellular environment in which the levels of network components may change within cells and across cells. Recent evidence suggests that protein concentration variability could explain cell fate decisions. However, systems with multiple inputs, multiple outputs, and changing input concentrations have not been studied in detail due to their complexity. Here, we take a systems biochemistry approach, combining physiochemical modeling and information theory, to investigate how cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) processes simultaneous input signals within a complex interaction network. We find that changes in input levels affect the amount of information transmitted by the network, as does the correlation between those inputs. This, and the allosteric regulation of COX-2 by its substrates, allows it to act as a signal integrator that is most sensitive to changes in relative input levels., Complexity of biochemical networks allows flexibly signal transmission Cells respond to a constant stream of intra-and extra-cellular signals as they carry out their many functions. Multiple incoming signals are detected and processed through complex biochemical networks to yield outgoing responses that determine multiple aspects of cell behavior. Although this highly dynamic process is crucial to understanding how cells make decisions, it is poorly understood. Here we present a mechanistic analysis of signal flow in a model biochemical network with multiple incoming and outgoing signals. We find that the preferred path of signal flow between each input and output is dependent on both the levels of the inputs and the relationship between inputs. Our data suggests that the complexity of biochemical networks containing multiple inputs, outputs, and paths allows a cell to flexibly transmit multiple outgoing signals under a range of different incoming signals.

In animal groups, leaders have often been proposed to be those individuals who possess additional knowledge about their surroundings, such as the location of a food source or a potential predator. Understanding how this information propagates through the group to shape collective response is an important step to elucidate the evolutionary basis of leadership. In this paper, we study a Boolean model of collective behavior, in which a single leader interacts with a group of followers in a binary decision-making process. Through an analytical treatment of the associated Markov chain, we establish closed-form solutions for the transition probability matrix and the stationary distribution, as functions of the noise in the decision-making process and the size of the group. We leverage these expressions to quantify information transfer within the group, measured through the information-theoretic construct of transfer entropy. We find that information transfer depends nonlinearly on the group size and noise. For low noise intensities, the system is nearly deterministic, such that no information is shared within the group; an equivalent effect is observed for large noise intensities, which mask the information transfer. We determine the existence of critical noise intensities at which the leader maximizes information transfer to a follower or followers maximize information sharing between each other for a given group size. These analytical findings suggest that noise might have a positive role in collective behavior, facilitating the transfer of knowledge within the group, from leaders to followers.

Granger causality is a statistical notion of causal influence based on prediction via vector autoregression. For Gaussian variables it is equivalent to transfer entropy, an information-theoretic measure of time-directed information transfer between jointly dependent processes. We exploit such equivalence and calculate exactly the 'local Granger causality', i.e. the profile of the information transfer at each discrete time point in Gaussian processes; in this frame Granger causality is the average of its local version. Our approach offers a robust and computationally fast method to follow the information transfer along the time history of linear stochastic processes, as well as of nonlinear complex systems studied in the Gaussian approximation., Comment: 4 figures

Understanding the brain function requires investigating information transfer across brain regions. Shannon began the remarkable new field of information theory in 1948. It basically can be divided into two categories: directed and undirected information-theoretical approaches. As we all know, neural signals are typically nonlinear and directed flow between brain regions. We can use directed information to quantify feed-forward information flow, feedback information, and instantaneous influence in the high-level visual cortex. Moreover, neural signals have bidirectional information flow properties and are not captured by the transfer entropy approach. Therefore, we used directed information to quantify bidirectional information flow in this study. We found that there has information flow between the scene-selective areas, e.g., OPA, PPA, RSC, and object-selective areas, e.g., LOC. Specifically, strong information flow exists between RSC and LOC. It explained that functionally coupled between RSC and LOC plays a vital role in visual scenes/object categories or recognition in our daily lives. Meanwhile, we also found weak reverse-directed information flow in the visual scenes and objects neural networks.

The transcriptional network determines a cell’s internal state by regulating protein expression in response to changes in the local environment. Due to the interconnected nature of this network, information encoded in the abundance of various proteins will often propagate across chains of noisy intermediate signaling events. The data-processing inequality (DPI) leads us to expect that this intracellular game of “telephone” should degrade this type of signal, with longer chains losing successively more information to noise. However, a previous modeling effort predicted that because the steps of these signaling cascades do not truly represent independent stages of data processing, the limits of the DPI could seemingly be surpassed, and the amount of transmitted information could actually increase with chain length. What that work did not examine was whether this regime of growing information transmission was attainable by a signaling system constrained by the mechanistic details of more complex protein-binding kinetics. Here we address this knowledge gap through the lens of information theory by examining a model that explicitly accounts for the binding of each transcription factor to DNA. We analyze this model by comparing stochastic simulations of the fully nonlinear kinetics to simulations constrained by the linear response approximations that displayed a regime of growing information. Our simulations show that even when molecular binding is considered, there remains a regime wherein the transmitted information can grow with cascade length, but ends after a critical number of links determined by the kinetic parameter values. This inflection point marks where correlations decay in response to an oversaturation of binding sites, screening informative transcription factor fluctuations from further propagation down the chain where they eventually become indistinguishable from the surrounding levels of noise.

This study introduces a framework for the information-theoretic analysis of brain functional connectivity performed at the level of electroencephalogram (EEG) sources. The framework combines the use of common spatial patterns to select the EEG components which maximize the variance between two experimental conditions, simultaneous implementation of vector autoregressive modeling (VAR) with independent component analysis to describe the joint source dynamics and their projection to the scalp, and computation of information dynamics measures (information storage, information transfer, statistically significant network links) from the source VAR parameters. The proposed framework was tested on simulated EEGs obtained mixing source signals generated under different coupling conditions, showing its ability to retrieve source information dynamics from the scalp signals. Then, it was applied to investigate scalp and source brain connectivity in a group of children manifesting episodes of focal and generalized epilepsy, the analysis was performed on EEG signals lasting 5 s, collected in two consecutive windows preceding and one window following each ictal episode. Our results show that generalized seizures are associated with a significant decrease from pre-ictal to post-ictal periods of the information stored in the signals and of the information transferred among them, reflecting reduced self-predictability and causal connectivity at the level of both scalp and source brain dynamics. On the contrary, in the case of focal seizures the scalp EEG activity was not discriminated across conditions by any information measure, while source analysis revealed a tendency of the measures of information transfer to increase just before seizures and to decrease just after seizures. These results suggest that focal epileptic seizures are associated with a reorganization of the topology of EEG brain networks which is only visible analyzing connectivity among the brain sources. Our findings emphasize the importance of EEG modeling approaches able to deal with the adverse effects of volume conduction on brain connectivity analysis, and their potential relevance to the development of strategies for prediction and clinical treatment of epilepsy.

Uncovering dynamic information flow between stock market indices has been the topic of several studies which exploited the notion of transfer entropy or Granger causality, its linear version. The output of the transfer entropy approach is a directed weighted graph measuring the information about the future state of each target provided by the knowledge of the state of each driving stock market index. In order to go beyond the pairwise description of the information flow, thus looking at higher order informational circuits, here we apply the partial information decomposition to triplets consisting of a pair of driving markets (belonging to America or Europe) and a target market in Asia. Our analysis, on daily data recorded during the years 2000 to 2019, allows the identification of the synergistic information that a pair of drivers carry about the target. By studying the influence of the closing returns of drivers on the subsequent overnight changes of target indexes, we find that (i) Korea, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore are, in order, the most influenced Asian markets, (ii) US indices SP500 and Russell are the strongest drivers with respect to the bivariate Granger causality, and (iii) concerning higher order effects, pairs of European and American stock market indices play a major role as the most synergetic three-variables circuits. Our results show that the Synergy, a proxy of higher order predictive information flow rooted in information theory, provides details that are complementary to those obtained from bivariate and global Granger causality, and can thus be used to get a better characterization of the global financial system.

Xeniid corals (Cnidaria: Alcyonacea), a family of soft corals, include species displaying a characteristic pulsing behavior. This behavior has been shown to increase oxygen diffusion away from the coral tissue, resulting in higher photosynthetic rates from mutualistic symbionts. Maintaining such a pulsing behavior comes at a high energetic cost, and it has been proposed that coordinating the pulse of individual polyps within a colony might enhance the efficiency of fluid transport. In this paper, we test whether patterns of collective pulsing emerge in coral colonies and investigate possible interactions between polyps within a colony. We video recorded different colonies of Heteroxenia sp. in a laboratory environment. Our methodology is based on the systematic integration of a computer vision algorithm (ISOMAP) and an information-theoretic approach (transfer entropy), offering a vantage point to assess coordination in collective pulsing. Perhaps surprisingly, we did not detect any form of collective pulsing behavior in the colonies. Using artificial data sets, however, we do demonstrate that our methodology is capable of detecting even weak information transfer. The lack of a coordination is consistent with previous work on many cnidarians where coordination between actively pulsing polyps and medusa has not been observed. In our companion paper, we show that there is no fluid dynamic benefit of coordinated pulsing, supporting this result. The lack of coordination coupled with no obvious fluid dynamic benefit to grouping suggests that there may be non-fluid mechanical advantages to forming colonies, such as predator avoidance and defense.

Information transfer, measured by transfer entropy, is a key component of distributed computation. It is therefore important to understand the pattern of information transfer in order to unravel the distributed computational algorithms of a system. Since in many natural systems distributed computation is thought to rely on rhythmic processes a frequency resolved measure of information transfer is highly desirable. Here, we present a novel algorithm, and its efficient implementation, to identify separately frequencies sending and receiving information in a network. Our approach relies on the invertible maximum overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT) for the creation of surrogate data in the computation of transfer entropy and entirely avoids filtering of the original signals. The approach thereby avoids well-known problems due to phase shifts or the ineffectiveness of filtering in the information theoretic setting. We also show that measuring frequency-resolved information transfer is a partial information decomposition problem that cannot be fully resolved to date and discuss the implications of this issue. Last, we evaluate the performance of our algorithm on simulated data and apply it to human magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings and to local field potential recordings in the ferret. In human MEG we demonstrate top-down information flow in temporal cortex from very high frequencies (above 100Hz) to both similarly high frequencies and to frequencies around 20Hz, i.e. a complex spectral configuration of cortical information transmission that has not been described before. In the ferret we show that the prefrontal cortex sends information at low frequencies (4-8 Hz) to early visual cortex (V1), while V1 receives the information at high frequencies (> 125 Hz)., Author summary Systems in nature that perform computations typically consist of a large number of relatively simple but interacting parts. In human brains, for example, billions of neurons work together to enable our cognitive abilities. This well-orchestrated teamwork requires information to be exchanged very frequently. In many cases this exchange happens rhythmically and, therefore, it seems beneficial for our understanding of physical systems if we could link the information exchange to specific rhythms. We here present a method to determine which rhythms send, and which rhythms receive information. Since many rhythms can interact at both sender and receiver side, we show that the above problem is tightly linked to partial information decomposition—an intriguing problem from information theory only solved recently, and only partly. We applied our novel method to information transfer in the human inferior temporal cortex, a brain region relevant for object perception, and unexpectedly found information transfer originating at very high frequencies at 100Hz and then forking to be received at both similarly high but also much lower frequencies around 20Hz. These results overturn the current standard assumption that low frequencies send information to high frequencies.

Do efficient communication networks accelerate solution discovery? The most prominent theory of organizational design for collective learning maintains that informationally efficient collaboration networks increase a group’s ability to find innovative solutions to complex problems. We test this idea against a competing theory that argues that communication networks that are less efficient for information transfer will increase the discovery of novel solutions to complex problems. We conducted a series of experimentally designed Data Science Competitions, in which we manipulated the efficiency of the communication networks among distributed groups of data scientists attempting to find better solutions for complex statistical modeling problems. We present findings from 16 independent competitions, where individuals conduct greedy search and only adopt better solutions. We show that groups with inefficient communication networks consistently discovered better solutions. In every experimental trial, groups with inefficient networks outperformed groups with efficient networks, as measured by both the group’s average solution quality and the best solution found by a group member.

Information transfer, measured by transfer entropy, is a key component of distributed computation. It is therefore important to understand the pattern of information transfer in order to unravel the distributed computational algorithms of a system. Since in many natural systems distributed computation is thought to rely on rhythmic processes a frequency resolved measure of information transfer is highly desirable. Here, we present a novel algorithm, and its efficient implementation, to identify separately frequencies sending and receiving information in a network. Our approach relies on the invertible maximum overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT) for the creation of surrogate data in the computation of transfer entropy and entirely avoids filtering of the original signals. The approach thereby avoids well-known problems due to phase shifts or the ineffectiveness of filtering in the information theoretic setting. We also show that measuring frequency-resolved information transfer is a partial information decomposition problem that cannot be fully resolved to date and discuss the implications of this issue. Last, we evaluate the performance of our algorithm on simulated data and apply it to human magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings and to local field potential recordings in the ferret. In human MEG we demonstrate top-down information flow in temporal cortex from very high frequencies (above 100Hz) to both similarly high frequencies and to frequencies around 20Hz, i.e. a complex spectral configuration of cortical information transmission that has not been described before. In the ferret we show that the prefrontal cortex sends information at low frequencies (4-8 Hz) to early visual cortex (V1), while V1 receives the information at high frequencies (> 125 Hz).Author SummarySystems in nature that perform computations typically consist of a large number of relatively simple but interacting parts. In human brains, for example, billions of neurons work together to enable our cognitive abilities. This well-orchestrated teamwork requires information to be exchanged very frequently. In many cases this exchange happens rhythmically and, therefore, it seems beneficial for our understanding of physical systems if we could link the information exchange to specific rhythms. We here present a method to determine which rhythms send, and which rhythms receive information. Since many rhythms can interact at both sender and receiver side, we show that the interpretation of results always needs to consider that the above problem is tightly linked to partial information decomposition - an intriguing problem from information theory only solved recently, and only partly. We applied our novel method to information transfer in the human inferior temporal cortex, a brain region relevant for object perception, and unexpectedly found information transfer originating at very high frequencies at 100Hz and then forking to be received at both similarly high but also much lower frequencies around 20Hz. These results overturn the current standard assumption that low frequencies send information to high frequencies.

Transfer entropy is an established method for quantifying directed statistical dependencies in neuroimaging and complex systems datasets. The pairwise (or bivariate) transfer entropy from a source to a target node in a network does not depend solely on the local source-target link weight, but on the wider network structure that the link is embedded in. This relationship is studied using a discrete-time linearly-coupled Gaussian model, which allows us to derive the transfer entropy for each link from the network topology. It is shown analytically that the dependence on the directed link weight is only a first approximation, valid for weak coupling. More generally, the transfer entropy increases with the in-degree of the source and decreases with the in-degree of the target, indicating an asymmetry of information transfer between hubs and low-degree nodes. In addition, the transfer entropy is directly proportional to weighted motif counts involving common parents or multiple walks from the source to the target, which are more abundant in networks with a high clustering coefficient than in random networks. Our findings also apply to Granger causality, which is equivalent to transfer entropy for Gaussian variables. Moreover, similar empirical results on random Boolean networks suggest that the dependence of the transfer entropy on the in-degree extends to nonlinear dynamics., 12 pages, 5 figures

Information theory, introduced by Shannon in the context of information transfer in communication channels, is used as a foundation for research in many diverse fields. The concept Entropy in terms of information theory is seen as the average amount of information or the rate of information produced when forming a message, element by element. Entropy has found broad application in many research fields and can also be applied in software engineering for quantifying the uncertainty associated with a software code. In this paper, information entropy and its application towards measuring software complexity are explored, along with the formulation of an information entropy based complexity measure that considers logical decision-making, processes, and software statement interaction patterns in control flow graphs mapped from actual software code. To broaden the application of the proposed metric, the execution times of nodes in the control flow graphs are also incorporated. Further, the metric is evaluated against eight different axioms that a software complexity measure should satisfy.

This paper measures the information transmission and relationships between Chinese stock market and the commodity futures market on different time scales novelly by combining the transfer entropy from information theory and the multi-scale analysis technique, the complete empirical mode decomposition based on adaptive noise (CEEMDAN). Pairwise information transfer and average information inflow and outflow of assets and markets are investigated. Information spillover network is built based on the net transfer entropy and the direction of information spillover is identified. The results show that the direction and magnitude of information spillover have changed as types of assets and the time scale have changed. There is heterogeneity in the relationship between stock market and the metals, energy and agricultural product futures markets. Lastly by cluster analysis using minimum spanning tree based on transfer entropy, it shows that the methanol futures and information industry form the core of the network. The study finds that with the increase of time scale, the relative information transmission between the commodity futures market and the stock market gradually decreases, and the stock market is in a more influential position.

The Vicsek model is a flocking model comprising simple point particles originally proposed with metric interactions: particles align to neighbours within a radius. Later, topological interactions were introduced such that particles align with their closest k neighbours. We simulate the Vicsek model utilising topological neighbour interactions and estimate information theoretic quantities as a function of noise, the variability in the extent to which each particle aligns with its neighbours, and the flock direction. These quantities have been shown to be important in characterising phases transitions, such as that exhibited by the Vicsek model. We show that these quantities, mutual information and global transfer entropy, are in fact dependent on observation time, and in comparison to the canonical Vicsek model which utilises range-based interactions, the topological variant converges to the long-term limiting behaviour with smaller observation windows. Finally, we show that in contrast to the metric model, which exhibits maximal information transfer for the ordered regime, the topological model maintains this maximal information transfer dependent on noise and velocity, rather than the current phase.