Your brain operates on the edge of chaos

“Have you ever experienced that eerie feeling of a thought popping into your head as if from nowhere, with no clue as to why you had that particular idea at that particular time? You may think that such fleeting thoughts, however random they seem, must be the product of predictable and rational processes. After all, the brain cannot be random, can it? Surely it processes information using ordered, logical operations, like a powerful computer?

Actually, no. In reality, your brain operates on the edge of chaos. Though much of the time it runs in an orderly and stable way, every now and again it suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise. . . . Hovering on the edge of chaos provides brains with their amazing capacity to process information and rapidly adapt to our ever-changing environment, but what happens if we stray either side of the boundary? The most obvious assumption would be that all of us are a short step away from mental illness.”

Fascinating article, “Disorderly genius: How chaos drives the brain,” by David Robson, in the June 29 2009 issue of New Scientist.

I’m neither a new scientist nor an old one, but this article makes me think about that peculiar but enjoyable state of mind one has on the edge of falling asleep, when unrelated images and ideas float in and out of the mind with astonishing rapidity. Perhaps falling asleep makes the neurons pop off at random.