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From: sandyz@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Sandy Zinn)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Chaos and AI
Summary: brain fractals
Message-ID: <350@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Date: 20 Mar 90 00:34:28 GMT
References: <6925@cps3xx.UUCP> <3142@usceast.UUCP> <1480@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <3147@usceast.UUCP>
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> In article <1480@watserv1.waterloo.edu> ssingh@watserv1.waterloo.edu ($anjay "lock-on" $ingh - Indy Studies) writes:
> >There was an article awhile back in Discover called "The Body Chaotic."
> >It mentioned that the EEGs of epileptics during a seizure become far
> >more periodic and regular as whole groups of neurons begin firing in
> >sync across the brain. A normal person's EEG shows little trace of
> >periodicity. It suggests that a nice chaotic "buzz" is the normal
> >state of affairs.
> >BTW, usually wherever there is chaos, fractals are lurking nearby. In the
> >excitement about chaos, fractals seem to have faded into the woodwork. Has
> >anyone seen or done work which tries to tie fractals, chaos, and NNs together
> >into a biologically plausible model? 
> 
In article <3147@usceast.UUCP>, park@usceast.UUCP (Kihong Park) writes:
> Indeed, chaos and fractals are close-knit subjects.
> Are fractal distributions or connectivity patterns
> observable in the brain?

Here's an excerpt from an article written by neurophysiologist Karl Pribram
way back in *1959* (!), before fractals were even "invented":

  The effect of continued intrinsic sector activity will, according
  to this model, result in a sequence of patterns of information
  (partitions) of increasing complexity, which in turn allow more
  and more precise specification of particular elements...more and
  more information can be conveyed by any given input.  As a result,
  the organism's differentiative behavior remains invariant under a
  progressively narrower range of systems of *transformations* of
  the input -- differentiations become more absolute.

I'm no mathematician, but this sounds like fractals to me.

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    Sandra Zinn              |   "The squirming facts
    (yep these are my ideas  |      exceed the squamous mind"
     they only own my kybd)  |         -- Wallace Stevens