!!!New!!!!
!!!New!!!!
Fractal Processes in Time: Implications for
Developmental Biopsychiatry and Consciousness
carl_anderson@hms.harvard.edu
Excellent fractal images by FracPPC
The Fractal Geometry of Time in Neurobiology and Fetal REM sleep.
Only a decade ago patterns of bunching or clustering
in the opening and closing events of ion channels, quantal release
of neural transmitters, or spontaneous patterns of firing neurons,
heart beats, and breaths in the fetus or even cars on an expressway
were perceived as random and uncorrelated noise-like processes.
Many biological and natural processes are
assumed to be best described as random independent processes and
are still widely perceived, studied and modeled under this assumption.
However, a revolution in the scientific perception of such noisy
natural processes was started with Benoit Mandelbrot's 1983 book
The Fractal Geometry of Nature .
Fractal geometry implies a fundamentally new
view of how living and nonliving matter is organized into complex
recursively nested patterns over multiple levels of space or time.
Patterns termed "fractal" or "self-similar"
are recurrently irregular in space or time, with themes repeated
like the layers of an onion at different levels or scales.
This web site is an attempt to promote this
new point of view in the neurosciences and in emerging concepts
of consciousness.
Carl M. Anderson, Ph.D.,
Consolidated Department of Psychiatry,
Harvard Medical School,
Brain Imaging Center,
McLean Hospital,
Belmont, MA 02178 USA Copywrite
CMA
carl_anderson@hms.harvard.edu