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What is the nature of neural representations? Many studies addressing this question searched for single neurons with easily interpretable activity profiles, even though all cognitive tasks require the joint activity of a large population of neurons. In this talk I highlight the "other" neurons, and show that when considered as a population these "disordered" neurons can support behavioral tasks - and are even a better substrate for flexible tasks than "ordered" neurons are. Using a combination of data analysis from the labs of Ranulfo Romo and Earl Miller with numerical simulations and analytical calculations I will try to make all of these notions and statements more rigorous and precise.

Shear flows undergo a sudden transition from laminar to turbulent motion as the velocity increases, and the onset of turbulence radically changes transport efficiency and mixing properties. Even for the well-studied case of pipe flow, it has not been possible to determine at what Reynolds number the motion will be either persistently turbulent or ultimately laminar.
We show that in pipes, turbulence that is transient at low Reynolds numbers becomes sustained at a critical point via a non-equilibrium phase transition. Through extensive experiments and computer simulations, we were able to identify and characterize the processes ultimately responsible for sustaining turbulence. In contrast to the classical Landau-Ruelle-Takens view that turbulence arises from an increase in the temporal complexity of fluid motion, here, spatial proliferation of chaotic domains is the decisive process and intrinsic to the nature of fluid turbulence.