Tuning in to Noise

Two sweeping generalizations can be made about most natural systems: They are intrinsically nonlinear and they operate in noisy environments. Examples abound, ranging from weather systems to oscillating chemical reactions to the movements of an eel. The most complex example is arguably the human central nervous system, flooded as it is with the "noise" of modern life. Since its introduction more than ten years ago, stochastic resonance has become widely recognized as a paradigm for noise‐induced effects in driven nonlinear dynamic systems.