Strange attractors: purpose, synchronicity, flow, and the neurodynamics of meaning | Neuroscience of Consciousness | Oxford Academic
Steven Kotler, Michael Mannino, Karl Friston, Scott Kelso, Strange attractors: purpose, synchronicity, flow, and the neurodynamics of meaning, Neuroscience of Consciousness, Volume 2026, Issue 1, 2026, niag063, https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niag063 Steven Kotler, Michael Mannino, Karl Friston, Scott Kelso, Strange attractors: purpose, synchronicity, flow, and the neurodynamics of meaning, Neuroscience of Consciousness, Volume 2026, Issue 1, 2026, niag063, https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niag063 This paper proposes a neurodynamic framework for meaningful experience, grounded in the recursive alignment of brain dynamics across time. We argue that the meaningful experiences known as “purpose”, “synchronicity”, and “flow” are not distinct phenomena, but temporal expressions of the same underlying process: metastable coherence in the brain’s attractor landscape. Synchronicity marks transient realignments across representational levels; flow reflects the low-entropy navigation of emergent structur