Synergetics of Cognition, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1990 Proceedings of the International Symposium at Schloß Elmau, Bavaria, June 4-8, 1989 Coll. Springer Series in Synergetics, Vol. 45

This book presents the invited lectures given at the International Symposium on Synergetics of Cognition held at SchloB Elmau, Bavaria (Fed. Rep. of Germany), June 4-8, 1989. The understanding of the processes underlying cognition is certainly one of the most challenging and difficult problems confronting the human mind. It is an enterprise that requires the cooperation of scientists from fields ranging from the neurosciences and psychology through biology to the computer sciences, physics and mathematics. The papers included in this volume reflect this joint effort. As will be evident, there is a remarkable convergence of ideas stemming from various fields, for instance, the earlier ideas on Gestalt theory celebrate a come­ back and remarkable analogies are being established with modem concepts of self-organization as dealt with in the interdisciplinary field of synergetics. The individual topics range from the "microscopic level", where new exciting results on specific oscillations of neural activity are reported, to computer simulations of perception, and finally psychological experiments at the "macroscopic level". We hope that this book will convey to its readers the same enthusiasm that was felt by the participants of the symposium. We wish to thank Mrs. U. Funke for the excellent organisation of the sym­ posium, and the Volkswagen-Stiftung, Hannover, for its financial support. We are furthermore grateful to Christoph Stadler and Zora Franko for their help in com­ piling the name and subject indexes. Finally we wish to thank Springer-Verlag, in particular Dr. Angela Lahee, for the excellent cooperation.

I Introduction.- Synergetics as a Tool for the Conceptualization and Mathematization of Cognition and Behaviour — How Far Can We Go.- The Self-Organization Perspective in Cognition Research: Historical Remarks and New Experimental Approaches.- II Network Models.- Experiments with Representation in Neural Networks: Object Motion, Speech, and Arithmetic.- Connectionist Generalization and Incremental Learning in Combinatorial Domains.- III Oscillatory Processes in the Brain.- Synchronization of Oscillatory Responses in Visual Cortex: A Plausible Mechanism for Scene Segmentation.- Stimulus-Specific Synchronization in Cat Visual Cortex and Its Possible Role in Visual Pattern Recognition.- A Model for Feature Linking via Correlated Neural Activity.- On the Problem of Anomalous Dispersion in Chaoto-Chaotic Phase Transitions of Neural Masses, and Its Significance for the Management of Perceptual Information in Brains.- A Hypothesis Concerning Timing in the Brain.- Prolegomenon for a Holonomic Brain Theory.- IV Stability in Cognitive Systems.- The Phenomenology of Autonomous Order Formation in Perception.- Stability and Instability in Cognitive Systems: Multistability, Suggestion, and Psychosomatic Interaction.- V Perception and Action.- Concepts in Early Vision.- Visual Representations in the Brain: Inferences from Psychophysical Research.- Phase Transitions: Foundations of Behavior.- Links Between Active Perception and the Control of Action.- Symmetry and Symmetry-Breaking in Thermodynamic and Epistemic Engines: A Coupling of First and Second Laws.- Autonomous Organization in Perception and Motor Control.- VI Psycho-emotional Development and Social Cognition.- Three Worlds Interactionism and Developmental Psychology: Perspectives of the Synergetic Approach.- Phase Transitions in Psychoemotional Development.- Preliminary Notes on Social Synergetics, Cognitive Maps and Environmental Recognition.- Synergetics in Clinical Psychology.- VII Language Processes.- Structure and Computation in the Human Mental Lexicon.- Basic Principles of Self-Organization in Language.- Name Index.- Index of Contributors.