  This paper presents the preliminary results of the characterization of
pattern evolution in the process of cosmic structure formation. We are applying
on N-body cosmological simulations data the technique proposed by Rosa, Sharma
& Valdivia (1999) and Ramos et al. (2000) to estimate the time behavior of
asymmetries in the gradient field. The gradient pattern analysis is a well
tested tool, used to build asymmetrical fragmentation parameters estimated over
a gradient field of an image matrix able to quantify a complexity measure of
nonlinear extended systems. In this investigation we work with the high
resolution cosmological data simulated by the Virgo consortium, in different
time steps, in order to obtain a diagnostic of the spatio-temporal disorder in
the matter density field. We perform the calculations of the gradient vectors
statistics, such as mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis, and correlations on the
gradient field. Our main goal is to determine different dynamical regimes
through the analysis of complex patterns arising from the evolutionary process
of structure formation. The results show that the gradient pattern technique,
specially the statistical analysis of second and third gradient moment, may
represent a very useful tool to describe the matter clustering in the Universe.
