Self-Organization in Nervous Systems: Some Illustrations

The term “self-organization” is one of the most popular concepts of modern science. According to the synergetic approach, self-organizing systems are systems which can acquire macroscopic spatial, temporal, or spatio-temporal structures by means of internal processes (Haken 1985). Since dynamic behaviour of hierarchically arranged structures might be interpreted in terms of “self-organization”, the nervous system can be considered as a prototype of self-organizing systems both conceptually (Szentágothai 1984, 1985) and mathematically (Amari 1983).