Chaotic itinerancy

Chaotic itinerancy is a closed-loop trajectory through high-dimensional state space of neural activity that directs the cortex in sequence of quasi-attractors. A quasi-attractor is a local region of convergent flows (attractant, absorbent) giving ordered, periodic activity and divergent flows (repellant, dispersive) giving disordered, chaotic activity between the regions.Quasi-attractors are associated with perceptions, thoughts and memories, the chaos between them with searches, and itinerancy with sequences in thinking, speaking and writing. Chaotic itinerancy differs from itineraries in symbolic dynamics where sequencing is arbitrary, from saddle points with measure-zero attracting flows, from Kelso/Bressler’s metastable neurodynamics, and from Freeman/Kozma’s cinematic neurodynamics