Stationarity of the constituents of the body and of its functionalities is a basic requirement for life, being equivalent to survival in first place. Assuming that the resting state activity of the brain serves essential functionalities, stationarity entails that the dynamics of the brain needs to be regulated on a time-averaged basis. The combination of recurrent and driving external inputs must therefore lead to a non-trivial stationary neural activity, a condition which is fulfiled for afferent signals of varying strengths only close to criticality. In this view, the benefits of working in the vicinity of a second-order phase transition, such as signal enhancements, are not the underlying evolutionary drivers, but side effects of the requirement to keep the brain functional in first place. It is hence more appropriate to use the term ‘self-regulated’ in this context, instead of ‘self-organized’.

身体成分及其功能的平稳性是生命的基本要求，首先相当于生存。假设大脑的静息状态活动服务于基本功能，平稳性意味着大脑的动态需要在时间平均的基础上进行调节。因此，经常性和驱动性外部输入的组合必须导致非平凡的静止神经活动，这种条件仅适用于强度变化的传入信号接近临界状态。在这种观点中，在二阶相变附近工作的好处，例如信号增强，不是潜在的进化驱动因素，而是首先保持大脑功能的要求的副作用。