We analyze the dynamics of self-organizing cortical maps under the influence of external stimuli. We show that if the map is a contraction, then the system has a unique equilibrium which is globally asymptotically stable; consequently the system acts as a stable encoder of external input stimuli. The system converges to a fixed point representing the steady-state of the neural activity which has as an upper bound the superposition of the spatial integrals of the weight function between neighboring neurons and the stimulus autocorrelation function. The proposed theory also includes nontrivial interesting solutions.