LAUSR

Abstract Today, based on brain imaging analyses, we can consider the brilliant metaphor about event discreteness of the conscious process by William James (1890) to be an experimental fact. Such events compose sequences: linguistic, episodic memory, motor behavior, etc., whose dynamics are robust, reproducible, and sensitively react to incoming informational signals. The human mind is able to process, understand and predict time-dependent information about the environment and about ourselves, and generate corresponding commands to control behavior. Many experiments have indicated that the mind relies on sequential dynamics to carry out these tasks. Based on brain imaging experiments, we discuss here a set of key principles and their instantiation in nonlinear differential equations to form a dynamical theory of consciousness and creativity. General hierarchical models of consciousness and creativity include coupled low-dimensional equations that govern cooperative variables for several cognitive modalities: episodic (semantic) memory, working memory, attention, emotion, perception and their sequential interaction. In the phase spaces spanned by variables of these models, the joint transient dynamics of cognitive modalities is represented by coupled heteroclinic networks which share complex metastable states. The interaction of such states is responsible for the robustness of transient neural dynamics involved in the generation of thoughts and in the programming of behavior. In the framework of the analyzed dynamical models, we discuss the interaction of cognitive processes and the generation of new information in creativity.