Sustainable dynamics of neural connections: A new concept of the emergence of cognition

Introduction. The problem of describing cognition as a result of the biological evolution of neural processes in the brain is especially difficult due to the need to involve a whole range of sciences and the competencies accumulated in them. The aim of this work is to identify and substantiate such dynamics of interaction processes in the neural network of the brain which explains their high intensity and maximum stability in the band of physical limitations of the existence of protein bodies. An important aspect of this goal is the need to substantiate the stages of biological evolution leading to the emergence of cognition (mind). Materials and Methods. The work mainly used heuristic methods: analogy, hypothetical-deductive method, modeling and thought experiment. The analogy involved the exact results of the theory of turbulence obtained from the variation principle. The modeling used the ideas of the similarity and dimensionality method, as well as the hydrodynamic laminar-turbulent transition. The hypothetical-deductive method used the ideas of the evolutionary method of the origin of species. Results. The author formulated and substantiated the concept of dynamics of high-intensity and maximally sustainable processes of interaction of neurons of the brain. The main results include the following: the analogy is revealed between information processes in living and inanimate nature with a reasonable common key for their understanding; within the framework of hydrodynamic analogy, a continuum model of the environment of neural interactions is proposed for the first time and the stages of the evolution of the nervous network are substantiated; the hypothesis of the transition to cognition as a consequence of the biological evolution of the neural network is formulated. Conclusions. The principle of sustainable dynamics allows us to consider cognitive processes from elementary acts of cognition to the emergence of reflection as a whole as an act of consciousness from a single point of view.