Digital Twins Need Feedback
2026-06-22 • Logic in Computer Science
Logic in Computer ScienceSocial and Information Networks
AI summaryⓘ
The authors explain that digital twins are more than just detailed digital copies; they are systems where the physical and digital parts constantly talk to each other, influencing each other in real time. They suggest this two-way interaction should be the key idea behind digital twins, especially in complex biological and social systems where small parts combine into bigger ones. They use examples like brain disease care and brain cell mapping to show that digital twins help manage data and decisions across many levels, rather than just creating detailed models. This approach supports better design, control, and practical use of data-driven feedback loops.
digital twinbidirectional feedbackmulti-scale hierarchyneuroinformaticsbrain healthepilepsy caredata-driven feedbackbiological systemssocial systemscomputational modeling
Authors
Guo-Qiang Zhang
Abstract
Digital twins are too often described as realistic simulations, anatomical avatars, dashboards, or data mirrors. Those artifacts can be useful, but they miss the defining property of a digital twin: bidirectional feedback between a physical counterpart and a virtual counterpart. The physical system continuously updates the virtual one; the virtual system informs actions that change measurement, intervention, operation, or governance in the physical world. We propose such a bidirectional feedback as the organizing principle for digital twins and apply it to a nested, multi-scale hierarchy of biological and social organization, in which lower-level units combine into higher-level systems, producing desirable properties at each level, from cells and tissues to organs, individuals, organizations, and population at large. Neuroinformatics is a stress test for this view because brain health, dementia, epilepsy, and other neurological diseases require the integration of cells, circuits, behavior, care pathways, and the translation of discovery to practice. Examples from epilepsy care and consortium-scale brain-cell atlas production show that digital twinning is not merely multi-scale modeling. It is a rich, multidisciplinary paradigm of computing for designing, governing, and driving feedback loops that turn data into accountable action.