Synergetic Approach to Phenomena of Perception in Natural and Artificial Systems

In this article we describe the synergetic approach to pattern recognition and associative memory as well as its extension to the modelling of phenomena observed in human perception. These are two examples of the application of phenomenological synergetics. In general, natural systems which show spontaneous self-organization can be divided into two classes: Systems for which the interaction at a microscopic level can be derived from first principles (like the laser or hydrodynamical systems), and systems where only the macroscopic phenomena are known. Examples of this class of systems which are treated with the methods of synergetics are the dynamics of spatio-temporal EEG patterns [2] and the so-called synergetic computers [1]. Synergetic computers are systems which we want to fulfill a special task, i.e. to act as an associative memory or to learn patterns which are offered from outside. Such systems can also be used to model phenomena in human perception, especially psychological experiments with ambiguous patterns as we shall describe below.

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