The property of a state, pattern, or behaviour to resist perturbations. Perturbations arise all the time in nervous systems, both from the outside due to time-varying and complex environments as well as from within due to extensive neural connectivity and concurrent and competing processes. Stability is therefore the prerequisite for a behavior to be functional and observable. In dynamical systems approaches, this property is mapped onto the mathematical concept of asymptotic stability that defines attractor states of dynamical systems.
See Attractor, Behavioral state concept, Differential equation. Dynamical systems approaches, Instability