title: Target of brain activity: its own critical point.
abstract: The brain regulates not only the body and its internal environment and motor activity, but it also regulates the activity of its own very self. What is the set-point or target of the brain's regulation of its own activity? A proposal is that the kind of state known to physics by the name "critical" may give a valuable model of the set-point of the brain's self-regulation. The idea of dynamical scaling then corresponds with John Hughlings Jackson's doctrine of levels. The idea of marginal phase junctions corresponds with the stable lability of the will.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: C J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Game
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009042:Motivation; D010684:Philosophy