Author: Gerhard Werner, Download URL, Journal: arxiv.org, Year: 2009,
Published, PDF - Acrobat This essay is presented with three objectives in mind: first, to document the prevalence of fractals at all levels of the nervous system, giving credence to the notion of their functional relevance; second,to underscore the intimate connections between fractals and phase transitions in complex dynamical systems,with a view of considering this relation as potential generator of natural fractals; and third to draw attention to the puzzling and as yet unresolved issues of the functional significance of scaling and self-similarity. As regards the latter, I suggest that they endow dynamic fractals with the capacity to adapt task execution to contextual changes across a range of scales, forming the foundation of multi-scale computing across levels of organization.

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