I have listed some key knowledge fragments from the course that I particularly liked:

• correlation is not causality
• a complex system is always different from its parts
• retrospective coherence gives us the benefit of hindsight but not the benefit of future-telling
• with complexity, one can replicate starting conditions but not outcomes
• using safe-fail in the complex domain, "go forward, probe and experiment", because we don't know the answer
• amplify "good" weak signals
• we use "ritual" to trigger identity (and we each have multiple identities)
• archetypes are collective representations, not caricatures
• metaphors are good for human understanding
• humans use pattern recognition intelligence; we are not an information processing machine
• any time a measure becomes a target it is no longer a measure
• and my favourite line, "cynics are people who care", since they are the ones looking for a better way to improve their organisations (hear, hear!).

There was much more from the course, and plenty to reflect upon. I will do some more reading, thinking and writing. For now, I am chasing up some of the author references in my notes (Sutcliffe, Thom, Kaufmann, and Klein, among others).

The first three postings in this series remind us how complex the individual topics of cognitive science, Buddhism, and religious experience can be. Certainly there are many interpretations of each-many more than an entire monograph could account for, let alone a column in the New York Times-and reminders of the density of such topics are valuable and need to be repeated. But the cultural phenomenon that David Brooks's column describes is its own topic altogether. Just what this phenomenon is will probably take a while for historians to describe and for critical scholars to assess. My preliminary suggestion is that we are witnessing an aesthetic urge, in which scientists and Buddhists find common cause in their pursuit of a beautiful-albeit potentially dangerous- "theory of everything."

More:

Most recently, I have just completed the Cognitive Edge accreditation course with Dave Snowden in Sydney. The three days were intellectually intense and fascinating. Whilst I have seen Dave perform at a number of conferences before, and read many of Dave's research papers and Dave's blog (now added to my blogroll), I have a far better understanding of his work and his personality than I did before.

As an aside, whilst I don't doubt his passion for his beloved Wales rugby side, I do doubt his judgement on their abilities! I guess we will have to wait and see how the Australians go in the rugby Tri-Nations (against New Zealand and Rugby World Cup holders, South Africa) to see if the Wallabies can show some top tier talent.

I have to complete the rewriting of my notes (they are a scrawl!) and chase up some references before making comment here about my Cognitive Edge experience. I expect to make some observations about the learning from the course next week. Suffice to say, the course was well worth the effort and the money!

In case you haven’t noticed, more brain empowerment and anti-aging gizmos and gadgets are entering the internet market designed to increase neuroplasticity. (Look for my upcoming blogs on sharpbrains.com and on the recent UCLA conference on anti-aging and regenerative medicine!)

Yet the more compelling story is the heightened critical mass awareness of brain function and brain injury made possible by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk (see my coverage of Bolte Taylor’s talk and the generous comments to issue forth since I reported on Taylor's TED presentation -- February and March archives of this blog.).

I am emboldened by the fact that Dr. Taylor’s talk has reached numbers of people whose lives have been challenged by stroke and other traumatic brain injuries. Much to my surprise however, is the way Taylor’s talk has inspired others to come forward with stories of spiritual enlightenment. To those of you who have generously shared your thoughts and stories vis a vis Taylor's life story, thank you. I will continue to use this blog as a vehicle for bringing the most up to date news and links to info concerning all things "brainy' and brain-related.

For those have not seen Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED presentation, simple go to

www.ted.com and search for Jill Bolte Taylor talk

or copy the link below and place it in your url searchbox

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

With the issue of stroke in mind, readers please consider the critical implications a new bill recently introduced into Congress for immediate consideration, namely, the National Neurotechnology Initiative Act.

The NNTI is a $200M/year initiative designed to foster new discoveries and accelerate the development of new and safer treatments for the one in three Americans living with a brain-related illness, injury or disease. Championing the NNTI are Senators Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) and Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representatives Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI 1st) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL 18th) who have called upon Congress to act quickly on this important legislation.

According to the NNIT Act website, this legislation will accelerate the development of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, autism, addiction, ALS, anxiety, depressive disorders, epilepsy, hearing loss, migraine, multiple sclerosis, obesity, pain, Parkinson’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, age-related macular degeneration, sensory disorders, sleep disorders, spinal cord injury, stroke, traumatic brain injury and many orphan diseases of the brain and nervous system.

One can only image the medical advancements to benefit from the passing of the bill. And in during this savage war-time, with scores of American troops returning home with traumatic brain injury and PTSD, enlightened legislation promises to up the ante on neurological research and application. Think of Bolte Taylor’s talk and take action!!

A neurotech advocacy group – http://www.neurotechindustry.org -- has provided sample letters to use to write to Congress men and women in your districts and states, asking them to approve the bill. PLEASE CLICK ON THIS WEBSITE FOR LETTERS AND ACCESS TO YOUR CONGRESS MEN AND WOMEN!

More to come on brain matters.

In the meantime, may the long days of summer ahead provide you with a chance to take time out to nourish, empower and embody brain!

As I blogged yesterday, in French, it took me a while to realize that switching keyboard language on the 'touch also changed the dictionary used for text prediction. Very sensical but I hadn't realized it. Writing in English with French dictionary predictions was rather painful. I basically had to click bypass the dictionary predictions on most words. Even "to" was transformed into "go" by the predictive keyboard, and I didn't necessarily notice all the substitutions done. Really, it was a frustrating experience.

It may seem weird that it would take me a while to realize that I could get an English predictive dictionary in a French interface. One reason for the delay is that I expect some degree of awkwardness in some software features, even with some Apple products. Another reason is that I wasn't using my 'touch for much text entry, as I'm pretty much waiting for OSX iPhone 2.0 which should bring me alternative text entry methods such as Graffiti, MessagEase and, one can dream, Dasher. If these sound like excuses for my inattention and absent-mindedness, so be it. :-D

At any rate, I did eventually find out that I could switch back and forth between French and English dictionaries for predictive text entry on my 'touch's onscreen keyboard. And I've been entering a bit of text through this method, especially answers to a few emails.

But, last night, I thought I'd give my 'touch a try as a note-taking device. I've been using PDAs for a number of years and note-taking has been a major component of my PDA usage pattern. In fact, my taking notes on a PDA has been so conspicuous that some people seem to associate me quite directly with this. It may even have helped garner a gadget-freak reputation, even though my attitude toward gadgets tends to be quite distinct from the gadget-freak pattern.

For perhaps obvious reasons, I've typically been able to train myself to efficiently use handheld text entry methods. On my NewtonOS MessagePad 130, I initially "got pretty good" at using the default handwriting recognition. This surprised a lot of people because human beings usually have a very hard deciphering my handwriting. Still on the Newton, switching to Graffiti, I became rather proficient at entering text using this shorthand method. On PalmOS devices (HandSpring Visor and a series of Sony Clié devices), I was usually doubling on Graffiti and MessagEase. In all of these cases, I was typically able to take rather extensive notes during different types of oral presentations or simply when I thought about something. Though I mostly used paper to take notes during classes I've attended during most of my academic coursework, PDA text entry was usually efficient enough that I could write down some key things in realtime. In fact, I've used PDAs rather extensively to take notes during ethnographic field research.

So, note taking was one of the intended uses for my iPod touch. But, again, I thought I would have to wait for text entry alternatives to the default keyboard before I could do it efficiently. So that's why I was so surprised, yesterday, when I found out that I was able to efficiently take notes during Dennett's talk using only the default OSX iPhone onscreen keyboard.

The key, here, is pretty much what someone at Apple was describing during some keynote session (might have been the "iPhone Roadmap" event): you need to trust the predictions. Yes, it sounds pretty "touchy-feely" (we're talking about "touch devices," after all ;-) ). But, well, it does work better than you would expect.

The difference is even more striking for me because I really was "fighting" the predictions. I couldn't trust them because most of them were in the wrong language. But, last night, I noticed how surprisingly accurate the predictions could be, even with a large number of characters being mistyped. Part of it has to do with the proximity part of the algorithm. If I type "xartion," the algorithm guesses that I'm trying to type "cartoon" because 'x' is close to 'c' and 'i' is close to 'o' (not an example from last night but one I just tried). The more confident you are that the onscreen keyboard will accurately predict what you're trying to type, the more comfortably you can enter text.  The more comfortable you are at entering text, the more efficient you become at typing, which begins a feedback loop.

Because I didn't care that specifically about the content of Dennett's talk, it was an excellent occasion to practise entering text on my 'touch. The stakes of "capturing" text were fairly low. It almost became a game. When you add characters to a string which is bringing up the appropriate suggestion and delete those extra characters, the suggestion is lost. In other words, using the example above, if I type "xartion," I get "cartoon" as a suggestion and simply need to type a space or any non-alphabetic character to accept that suggestion. But if I go on typing "xartionu" and go back to delete the 'u,' the "cartoon" suggestion disappears. So I was playing a kind of game with the 'touch as I was typing relatively long strings and trying to avoid extra characters. I lost a few accurate suggestions and had to retype these, but the more I trusted the predictive algorithm, the less frequently did I have to retype.

During a 90 minute talk, I entered about 500 words. While it may not sound like much, I would say that it captured the gist of what I was trying to write down. I don't think I would have written down much more if I had been writing on paper. Some of these words were the same as the ones Dennett uttered but the bulk of those notes were my own thoughts on what Dennett was saying. So there were different cognitive processes going on at the same time, which greatly slows down each specific process. I would still say that I was able to follow the talk rather closely and that my notes are pretty much appropriate for the task.

Now, I still have some issues with entering text using the 'touch's onscreen keyboard.

• While it makes sense to make it the default that all suggestions are accepted, there could be an easier way to refuse suggestions that tapping the box where that suggestion appears.
• It might also be quite neat (though probably inefficient) if the original characters typed by the user were somehow kept in memory. That way, one could correct inaccurate predictions using the original string.
• The keyboard is both very small for fingers and quite big for the screen.
• Switching between alphabetic characters and numbers is somewhat inefficient.
• While predictions have some of the same effect, the lack of a "spell as you type" feature decreases the assurance in avoiding typos.
• Dictionary-based predictions are still inefficient in bilingual writing.
• The lack of copy-paste changes a lot of things about text entry.
• There's basically no "command" or "macro" available during text entry.
• As a fan of outliners, I'm missing the possibility to structure my notes directly as I enter them.
• A voice recorder could do wonders in conjunction with text entry.
• I really just wish Dasher were available on OSX iPhone.

All told, taking notes on the iPod touch is more efficient than I thought it'd be but less pleasant than I wish it can become.

The writer is quite correct so say that:

Identity is a contemporary buzzword

and goes onto list instances of its use. I have been banging on about this casual uncritical use of the term identity. The writer goes on to say:

The everyday meaning of identity is never entirely fixed but there are successful definitions that have particular influence in particular contexts. There are two general definitions of identity in the articles featured in the Guardian. The first appears in articles on ID cards and identity fraud and encapsulates the notion of an individual's possession of official characteristics, a recognised legal identity to which a bundle of rights (political, economic and social) can be attached. The second is primarily concerned with culture and is often tagged with a national, ethnic or religious complement, "British identity" and, "Muslim identity" being by far the most common. In both cases, identity is construed as a recognisable object, a specific something with a given content that can be tagged with an appropriate label. This in itself is not uncontroversial, though it is not questioned as often as it ought to be.

The writer makes the valid distinction between the rather superficial notion of legal identity and the deeper, more slippery notion, of social identity: the latter tied to the blithely used notion "multiculturalism".

The problem here is that the writer doesn't at all offer even the beginnings of a conceptual analysis of what multiculturalism might denote. I understand the writer to be saying (though not using philosophical jargon) that there cannot be necessary and sufficient conditions for the complexity that is social identity - there are multitudinous overlapping collecting features.

We are not, however, condemned to theorising identity as a series of ever receding circles of categorisation: white, English, female, middle-class and so on, each with its inevitable weight of external definition over which we have little or no control.

That's an eminently sensible approach. The writer then goes onto to say:

There are alternatives. The Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism, for instance, emphasises the universal state of flux of which the self is a mere part: you are me and I am you and we are all the world. If that seems just a little too vague and lyrical, then it is worth noting that recent theories of the self which draw on connectionism in cognitive science have very similar conceptions of identity, not "egos in bags of skin" but embodied minds intimately connected to their environment through every vibrant nerve-ending.

The Buddhist conception is also a conception of the self that challenges the Lockean notion. It's ironic that the writer characterises the Hindu conception as too "vague and lyrical": and yet there is no indication at all that the writer understands what a connectionist theory of the self is. There seems to be a conflation between personal identity and social identity, identities that, I would grant, are somehow related. This said, I see no entailment between a connectionist theory of mind and an embodied and situated agent.

The writer should check out the discussion at the blog What Sorts of People.

                                                                                                                                                    (Pugh, c. 1938)

I was going to write something about this article that recently appeared in the New Scientist until I discovered that Brain Hacks had already done so. Hayek would have been appalled by what he'd term a logical contradiction - the mind explaining itself. Hayek is acutely aware that self-referentiality leads to dead-ends: the instrument of explanation simultaneously being the object of explanation cannot get us anywhere. Hayek takes the view that a unified theory of consciousness is forever beyond our grasp. See also Colin McGinn on cognitive closure.

Developing Intelligence has received its fair share of early accolades, receiving acclaim and/or citations from Scientific American Mind, Nature (one of the world's two leading scientific journals), The Atlantic Online, Blogger.Com, Business Week, Metafilter, Mental Floss, Lifehacker, and has been featured on the sought after front pages of Digg, Fark and Reddit. If you are interested in learning about what empirical science is finding with regard to proven effective and promising methods of enhancing various highly important branches of cognitive function, Developing Intelligence is a blog you'll definitely want to visit.

A bit of relevant personal info on Chatham. As can be viewed on his personal academic page, Chatham's research focuses on developmental cognitive neuroscience - the study of the development of cognitive function at the levels of behaviour (or cognitive performance) and the brain. His graduate advisor is Yuko Munakata. I attended a colloquiem given by Munakata a few years ago at the University of Toronto. Munakata is a very successful early-career researcher in cognitive neurological development, particularly in the area of the development of executive function (i.e., the ability to be aware of and exert control over one's cognition).

This simple mechanism seems out of question for many of us. But actually this process involves two separate systems, recognition and guidance. Neuroscientists have been long aware about this, but they had not been able to observe both in action.

Recent study conducted by Lior Shmuelof and Ehud Zohary of Hebrew University in Jerusalem tried to seek deeper concerning this phenomenon. They have used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to see duality in action in human volunteers.

In their study, the subjects watched videos of hands entering the screen from one side
and grasping objects on the opposite side. “Most previous studies of the two visual systems, were of people who had had brain damage”, said Shumuelof. Those suffering from amnesia could not recognize objects, whereas those with ataxia could identify objects but could not guide their hands to grab them. "Our study confirmed that there are two systems," Shmuelof says, "But it also found that this model is too simple. Some parietal brain regions, associated with planning to grasp objects, are also involved in observing actions taken by others (the hand on the screen) to grasp objects.”

In the future, they both want to study to what function this dual activity serves

Despite all those facts, there are still many people knocked out by their problems. One of the reasons is the varying perspective toward problems. Some people would consider problems as obstacles to success while other perceive them as challenges and opportunities to grow. These different approaches to problems will generate different results. Those who might consider problems, as obstacles will be drowned by their problems, while others can emerge and grow by the challenges.

There are times when we don’t have the ability to solve problems by our self. That’s the time when we need others for support. There are many terms to describe this scenario; teamwork, collaboration, cooperation and many more. One question that may arise related to teamwork is how many people should involve in teamwork to make it optimal? Surely extra heads would do much favor than one, but from scientific view there’s a strong need to specify what number exactly needed?

Triggered by this question, researchers at University of Illinois did the study on this matter, teamwork. The investigators enrolled 760 of the school's students to solve complex letter and word problems. Some toiled as individuals while others functioned in-group of two, three, four or five. The groups of three, four and five performed better than any set of individuals.

The dynamic is sensitive, however. Teams of two performed at the same level as two separate people, suggesting it’s too small to foster the dynamics that create optimal problem solving. Also interesting is that groups of three, four and five did equally well compared with one another; there was no advantage to adding people beyond a trio.

Study leader Patrick R. Laughlin says that in addition to tackling workplace challenges, problem-solving groups might enhance classroom learning. Further research is needed to determine whether student groups perform better than individuals do in academic settings and, if so, at what ages and test.

But does language mastery related to individual’s characteristic? It’s an interesting question to figure out. Many bilingual individuals say they feel like a different person depending on which language they are speaking. How can this be? A new study might shine some light on their claims.

Nairan Ramirez-Esparza, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, charted the personality traits of 225 Spanish/English bilingual subjects in both the U.S. and Mexico as they responded to questions presented in each language. The study ends up with the following conclusions: when using English, the bilinguals were more extraverted, agreeable and conscientious than when using Spanish.

Many previous researches have shown that bicultural individuals can assume
different roles depending on environmental cues. But the new results indicate that character itself can morph. "To show that changes in personality - albeit modest ones - can be triggered by something as subtle as the language you're speaking suggests that personality is more malleable than is widely expected," Ramirez-esparza says.

This study might cast some doubts on whether the translation of the questions is accurate or not, although all subjects were truly fluent with both languages. "The results are significant in that they document the contextual nature of personality," Says Daniel Heller, a psychology professor at the University of waterloo in Ontario, not involved in the research.

After reading 'The Extended Mind', and listening to the lectures, I'm wondering whether it would be possible to influence cognition by changing our general environment? In the lecture John refers to the case of Alzheimer's Disease (mentioned in Clark and Chalmers 1998, pp. 12 - 16) and argues that it may be a morally wrong action to alter the environment of an Alzheimer's Disease patient. Such a patient has, in an easily observable way, an extended mind with their surroundings. To mix up the layout of their food pantry, for example, would be directly playing with their mind!

But Clark and Chalmers don't argue that just those with mental problems posses an extended mind, we all do. For example, our visual systems have evolved to incorporate, and capitalise upon, our physical surroundings; they are more efficient because more of their limited physical resources can be focused elsewhere (Clark & Chalmers 1998, p. 11). If this is the case then, I'm thinking, that my altering of the physical environment that others are situated in would be altering with their minds too. If our external environment is regarded as a cognitive input (in a functionalist system I suppose), then playing with that external environment is playing with someones mind!  This would seem to be a morally wrong action just like the Alzheimer's Disease case mentioned above.   But perhaps this can be utilised in such a way that is, in some ways, morally good.

There are many issues with the term meditation but, at least in Indic traditions, one very common term that is translated as meditation has a direct relationship, a coupling to use a technical term, with cognition and the environment. Samādhi means (very simply) the uniting of the mind with external matter; not in a way that leaves a distinction between the two -like with Descartes's mind and body- but in a way that they are both, in a sense, mutually dependent, or better still, an extension of one and the same 'thing'. Many meditation practices developed around this concept, most notably within the Ch'an and Zen traditions, where the environment of the meditator is altered to produce a certain 'frame of mind' and to access certain cognitive processes.

Whether for good or bad it would seem that the extended mind thesis has some quite far reaching implications.  Of course we can enhance the mind through enhancing the external environment but we can also damage the mind too (think of the Alzheimer's case above).  I haven't drawn any conclusions from this position yet but what sorts of interactions with our physical environment, and especially the physical environment that others are situated within, would be morally permissible (were the extended mind thesis to be the case)?  Are we, or can we be, aware of the ways that our external environment impacts upon cognition?  Also, how would the extended mind thesis impact upon Aesthetics?

Shampoo and conditioner, originally uploaded by Clean Wal-Mart.

Despite the photo, no, this will not be a post about having too many options. I'll save that for Barry Schwartz ("On the Paradox of Choice").

Instead, what I'd like to talk about is the design of shampoo and conditioner bottles. Standing in the shower today, I reached for the shampoo first, and I checked the bottle to make sure it was indeed shampoo. The time before, in the shower, I had picked up a bottle, opened it and squeezed it out, only to reveal that the contents were conditioner. My mistake.

But how could I even make such an error? After all, aren't bottles color coded? Isn't the shampoo bottle supposed to be transparent while the conditioner is opaque? What about the idea that the shampoo stands with its cap in the air while the conditioner sits cap-down? Haven't they been meticulously designed already? I won't even go into the fact that we have this implicit knowledge. But we do. We all know how to tell shampoo and conditioner apart, aside from reading the bottles.

Back on topic, yes, I agree that the benefits of the bottles are products of design. However, all this designing cannot account for all of the possibilities.

The first problem with my set of hair products is that both bottles are opaque. The shampoo is clear, and the conditioner is white, but in the bottle, you can't really tell the difference. This problem was inherent in the design. Perhaps it could have been countered with the transparent/opaque solution, but that doesn't account for the second problem.

The second problem is user-related. A few months back, we had a sewage back-up in our apartment complex. This meant that we had raw sewage coming back up into the shower and bathtub. Needless to say, it was nasty, and the lesson learned there was that if there was a cap-down bottle, it was done for. I turned my new bottles cap-up. So, now, the only way my bottles can be told apart is by their labels and the directionality of those labels. Subtle, really.

The question then becomes: how can we further design shampoo and conditioner bottles so that they can be unmistakably told apart? Or is that really a question we need to be asking, after all?

Nuclear weapons certainly shaped the nature of society. They influenced how international relations were conducted, they modified thoughts on the utility of war, they affected how we spent our public funds, and they changed the way we perceived our collective future.  It is hard to say whether the way in which nuclear weapons were adopted was anywhere close to strategically optimal. The unilateral development seems to have made their use much more likely, and nuclear weapons are like life insurance policies - all is better when they are not used. However, there is great debate about the cost of bringing World War II to a close under alternative strategies. Many believe that a Japanese surrender was inevitable, and, while this may have been true, it is often the case in international relations that what is important is what people thought true - not what was actually true. The documents from the time that attempted to grapple with whether an invasion of Japan would result in a million dead US and Allied servicemen (or only maybe half that figure) indicate that the Truman Administration expected a costly closing of the war under other approaches. 

The way nuclear weapons were introduced spurred arms racing and proxy wars, but it is difficult to say if it prevented further great wars. So the question of interest is whether it is possible to engage in strategic engineering of technology development, or whether we will forever be in a situation of watching in the aftermath? Is it possible to not only predict the charactor of belligerent applications of emerging technologies, but also to engineer a path to the adoption of those applications that minimizes the risk?  

Pungent agents from Szechuan peppers excite sensory neurons by inhibiting two-pore potassium channels

Diana M Bautista1,2,3,4, Yaron M Sigal1,2,4, Aaron D Milstein2, Jennifer L Garrison2,3, Julie A Zorn2, Pamela R Tsuruda1,2,3, Roger A Nicoll1,2 & David Julius1,2

Abstract

In traditional folk medicine, Xanthoxylum plants are referred to as 'toothache trees' because their anesthetic or counter-irritant properties render them useful in the treatment of pain. Psychophysical studies have identified hydroxy-alpha-sanshool as the compound most responsible for the unique tingling and buzzing sensations produced by Szechuan peppercorns or other Xanthoxylum preparations. Although it is generally agreed that sanshool elicits its effects by activating somatosensory neurons, the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms remain a matter of debate. Here we show that hydroxy-alpha-sanshool excites two types of sensory neurons, including small-diameter unmyelinated cells that respond to capsaicin (but not mustard oil) as well as large-diameter myelinated neurons that express the neurotrophin receptor TrkC. We found that hydroxy-alpha-sanshool excites neurons through a unique mechanism involving inhibition of pH- and anesthetic-sensitive two-pore potassium channels (KCNK3, KCNK9 and KCNK18), providing a framework for understanding the unique and complex psychophysical sensations associated with the Szechuan pepper experience.

I'm not sure if the poor watchmaker who assembled this quack fully understood the implications of his creation. 

Can duckishness be captured by mere physical mechanisms, or is there some otherwordly component that makes a duck a duck?

A question that is not easily answered. Are free will and human behavior consequences of little biomechanical gears turning this way and that? Philosophy, math, physics, Isaac Asimov, the Matrix, blah blah. It's a question that has tortured researchers and provided great recyclable plots for nearly every sci-fi movie in the last half century. 

Cartoons have chosen to explore the human cognitive network in classic Magic Schoolbus style. Futurama, Family Guy, and other cultural bibles conclude that the mind is composed of little green men that turn the gears and levers to create behavior and emotions. I'm glad it's not that simple.

Do robots lack a heart?

I wonder if someone can reproduce me, ear to ear, in robotic form. Yes, even my uncanny inability to dance with that particular girl at a party. Or my strange powers that allow me to miss a game winning layup. Hurr hurr.

Anyhow, this post will serve as the conceptual basis for the Swarm Paintings post, the next post and a few future posts on image segmentation.

Motivation: Some might wonder what is the point of writing about such a topic. And that it is totally unrelated to what i write about generally. No! That is not the case. Most of the stuff I write about is related in some sense. Well the motivation for reading thoroughly about this (and writing) maybe condensed into the following:

1. The idea of a colony cognitive map is used in SI/A-life experiments, areas that really interest me.

2. Understanding the idea of colony cognitive maps gives a much better understanding of the inherent self organization in insect swarms and gives a lead to understand self organization in general.

3. The parallel to colony cognitive maps, the cognitive maps follow from cognitive science and brain science. Again areas that really interest me as they hold the key for the REAL artificial intelligence evolution and development in the future.

--

The term "Colony Cognitive Map" as i had pointed earlier is in a way a parallel to a Cognitive Map in brain science (i use the term brain science for a combination of fields like neuroscience, Behavioral psychology, cognitive sciences and the likes and will use it in this meaning in this post ) and also that the name is inspired from the same!

There is more than just a romantic resemblance between the self-organization of "simple" neurons into an intelligent brain like structure, producing behaviors well beyond the capabilities of an individual neuron and the self-organization of simple and un-intelligent insects into complex swarms and producing intelligent and very complex and also aesthetically pleasing behavior! I have written previously on such intelligent mass behavior. Consider another example, neurons are known to transmit neurotransmitters in the same way a social insect colony is marked by pheromone deposition and laying.

[Self Organization in Neurons (Left) and a bird swarm(Below).  Photo Credit >> Here and Here]

First let us try to revisit what swarm intelligence roughly is (yes i still am to write a post on a mathematical definition of the same!), Swarm Intelligence is basically a property of a system where the collective actions of unsophisticated agents, acting locally causes functional and sophisticated global patterns to emerge. Swarm intelligence gives a scheme to explore decentralized problem solving. An example that is also one of my favorites is that of a bird swarm, wherein the collective behaviors of birds each of which is very simple causes very complex global patterns to emerge. Over which I have written previously, don't forget to look at the beautiful video there if you have not done so already!

Self Organization in the Brain: Over the last two months or so i had been reading Douglas Hofstadter's magnum opus, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (GEB). This great book makes a reference to the self organization in the brain and its comparison with the behavior of the ant colonies and the self organization in them as early as 1979.

[Photo Source: Wikipedia Commons]

A brain is often regarded as one of the most if not the most complex entity. However if we look at a rock it is very complex too, but then what makes a brain so special? What distinguishes the brain from something like a rock is the purposeful arrangement of all the elements in it. The massive parallelism and self organization that is observed in it too amongst other things makes it special. Research in Cybernetics in the 1950s and 1960s lead the "cyberneticians" to try to explain the complex reactions and actions of the brain without any external instruction in terms of self organization. Out of these investigations the idea of neural networks grew out (1943 - ), which are basically very simplified models of how neurons interact in our brains. Unlike the conventional approaches in AI there is no centralized control over a neural network. All the neurons are connected to each other in some way or the other but just like the case in an ant colony none is in control. However together they make possible very complex behaviors. Each neuron works on a simple principle. And combinations of many neurons can lead to complex behavior, an example believed to be due to self-organization. In order to help the animal survive in the environment the brain should be in tune with it too. One way the brain does it is by constantly learning and making predictions on that basis. Which means a constant change and evolution of connections.

Cognitive Maps: The concept of space and how humans perceive it has been a topic that has undergone a lot of discussion in academia and philosophy. A cognitive map is often called a mental map, a mind map, cognitive model etc.

The origin of the term Cognitive Map is largely attributed to Edward Chace Tolman, here cognition refers to mental models that people use to perceive, understand and react to seemingly complex information. To understand what a mental model means it would be favorable to consider an example I came across on wikipedia on the same. A mental model is an inherent explanation in somebody's thought process on how something works in the spatial or external world in general. It is hypothesized that once a mental model for something or some representation is formed in the brain it can replace careful analysis and careful decision making to reduce the cognitive load. Coming back to the example consider a mental model in a person of perceiving the snake as dangerous. A person who holds this model will likely rapidly retreat as if is like a reflex without initial conscious logical analysis. And somebody who does not hold such a model might not react in the same way.

Extending this idea we can look at cognitive maps as a method to structure, organize and store spatial information in the brain which can reduce the cognitive load using mental models and and enhance quick learning and recall of information.

In a new locality for example, human way-finding involves recognition and appreciation of common representations of information such as maps, signs and images so to say. The human brain tries to integrate and connect this information into a representation which is consistent with the environment and is a sort of a "map". Such spatial (not necessarily spatial) internal representations formed in the brain can be called a cognitive map. As the familiarity of a person with an area increases then the reliance on these external representations of information gradually reduces. And the common landmarks become a tool to localize within a cognitive map.

Cognitive maps store conscious perceptions of the sense of position and direction and also the subconscious automatic interconnections formed as a result of acquiring spatial information while traveling through the environment. Thus they (cognitive maps) help to determine the position of a person, the positioning of objects and places and the idea of how to get from one place unto another. Thus a cognitive map may also be said to be an internal cognitive collage.

Though metaphorically similar the idea of a cognitive map is not really similar to a cartographic map.

Colony Cognitive Maps: With the above general background it would be much easier to think of a colony cognitive map. As it is basically a analogy to the above. As described in my post on adaptive routing, social insects such as ants construct trails and networks of regular traffic via a process of pheromone deposition, positive feedback and amplification by the trail following. These are very similar to cognitive maps. However one obvious difference lies in the fact that cognitive maps lie inside the brain and social insects such as ants write their spatial memories in the external environment.

Let us try to picture this in terms of ants, i HAVE written about how a colony cognitive map is formed in this post without mentioning the term.

A rather indispensable aspect of such mass communication as in insect swarms is Stigmergy. Stigmergy refers to communication indirectly, by using markers such as pheromones in ants. Two distinct types of stigmergy are observed. One is called sematectonic stigmergy, it involves a change in the physical environment characteristics. An example of sematectonic stigmergy is nest building wherein an ant observes a structure developing and adds its ball of mud to the top of it. Another form of stigmergy is sign-based and hence indirect. Here something is deposited in the environment that makes no direct contribution to the task being undertaken but is used to influence the subsequent behavior that is task related. Sign based stigmergy is very highly developed in ants. Ants use chemicals called as pheromones to develop a very sophisticated signaling system. Ants foraging for food lay down some pheromone which marks the path that they follow. An isolated ant moves at random but an ant encountering a previously laid trail will detect it and decide to follow it with a high probability and thereby reinforce it with a further quantity of pheromone. Since the pheromone will evaporate the lesser used paths will gradually vanish. We see that this is a collective behavior.

Now we assume that in an environment the actors (say for example ants) emit pheromone at a set rate. Also there is a constant rate at which the pheromone evaporates. We also assume that the ants themselves have no memory of previous paths taken and act ONLY on the basis of the local interactions with pheromone concentrations in the vicinity. Now if we consider the "field" or "map" that is the overall result and formed in the environment as a result of the movements of the individual ants over a fixed period of time. Then this "pheromonal" field contains information about past movements and decisions of the individual ants.

The pheromonal field (cognitive map) as i just mentioned contains information about past movements and decisions of the organisms, but not arbitrarily far in the past since the field "forgets" its distant history due to evaporation in time. Now this is exactly a parallel to a cognitive map, with the difference that for a colony the spatial information is written in the environment unlike inside the brain in the case of a human cognitive map. Another major similarity is that neurons release a number of neurotransmitters which can be considered to  be a parallel to the pheromones released as described above! The similarities are striking!

Now if i look back at the post on swarm paintings, then we can see that the we can make such paintings, with the help of a swarm of robots. More pheromone concentration on a path means more paint. And hence the painting is NOT random but is EMERGENT. I hope i could make the idea clear.

How Swarms Build Colony Cognitive Maps: Now it would be worthwhile to look at a simple model of how ants construct cognitive maps, that I read about in a wonderful paper by Mark Millonas and Dante Chialvo. Though i have already mentioned, I'll still sum up the basic assumptions.

Assumptions:

1. The individual agent (or ant) is memoryless.

2. There is no direct communication between the organisms.

3. There is no spatial diffusion of the pheromone deposited. It remains fixed at a point where it was deposited.

4. Each agent emits pheromone at a constant rate say $latex \eta$.

Stochastic Transition Probabilities:

Now the state of each agent can be described by a phase variable which contains its position $latex r$ and orientation $latex \theta$. Since the response at any given time is dependent solely on the present and not the previous history, it would be sufficient to specify the transition probability from one location $latex (r,\theta)$ to another place and orientation $latex (r',\theta')$ an instant later. Thus the movement of each individual agent can be considered roughly to be a continuous markov process whose probabilities at each and every instance of time are decided by the pheromone concentration $latex \sigma(x, t)$.

By using theoretical considerations, generalizations from observations in ant colonies the response function can be effectively summed up into a two parameter pheromone weight function.

$latex \displaystyle W(\sigma) = (1 + \frac{\sigma}{1 + \delta\varsigma})$

This weight function measures the relative probabilities in moving to a site $latex r$ with the pheromone density $latex \sigma(r)$.

Another parameter $latex \beta$ may be considered. This parameter measures the degree of randomness by which an agent can follow a pheromone trail. For low values of $latex \beta$ the pheromone concentration does not largely impact its choice but higher values do.

At this point we can define another factor $latex \displaystyle\frac{1}{\varsigma}$. This signifies the sensory capability. It describes the fact that the ants ability to sense pheromone decreases somewhat at higher concentrations. Something like a saturation scenario.

Pheromone Evolution: It is essential to describe how the pheromone evolves. According to an assumption already made, each agent emits pheromone at a constant rate $latex \eta$ with no spatial diffusion. If the pheromone at a location is not replenished then it will gradually evaporate. The pheromonal field so formed does contain a memory of the past movements of the agents in space, however because of the evaporation process it does not have a very distant memory.

Analysis: Another important parameter is the regarding the number of ants present, the density of ants $latex \rho_0$. Thus using all these parameters we can define a single parameter, the average pheromonal field $latex \displaystyle\sigma_0 = \frac{\rho_0 \eta}{\kappa}$. Where $latex \displaystyle \kappa$ is what i mentioned above, the rate of scent decay.

Further detailed analysis can be studied out here. With the above background it is just a matter of understanding.

[Evolution of distribution of ants : Source]

Click to Enlarge

Now after continuing with the mathematical analysis in the hyperlink above, we fix the values of the parameters.

Then a large number of ants are placed at random positions, the movement of each ant is determined by the probability $latex P_{ik}$.

Another assumption is that the pheromone density at each point at $latex t=0$ is zero. Each ant deposits pheromone at a decided rate $latex \eta$ and also the pheromone evaporates at a fixed rate $latex \kappa$.

In the above beautiful picture we the evolution of a distribution of ants on a 32x32 lattice. A pattern begins to emerge as early as the 100th time step. Weak pheromonal paths are completely evaporated and we finally get a emergent ant distribution pattern as shown in the final image.

The Conclusion that Chialvo and Millonas note is that scent following of the very fundamental type described above (assumptions) is sufficient to produce an evolution (emergence) of complex pattern of organized flow of social insect traffic all by itself. Detailed conclusion can be read in this wonderful paper!

References and Suggested for Further Reading:

1. Cognitive Maps, click here >>

2. Remembrance of places past: A History of Theories of Space. click here >>

3. The Science of Self Organization and Adaptivity, Francis Heylighen, Free University of Brussels, Belgium. Click here >>

4.   The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map, John O' Keefe and Lynn Nadel, Clarendon Press, Oxford. To access the pdf version of this book click here >>

5. The Self-Organization in the Brain, Christoph von der Malsburg, Depts for Computer Science, Biology and Physics, University of Southern California.

5. How Swarms Build Cognitive Maps, Dante R. Chialvo and Mark M. Millonas, The Santa Fe Institute of Complexity. Click here >>

6. Social Cognitive Maps, Swarm Collective Perception and Distributed Search on Dynamic Landscapes, Vitorino Ramos, Carlos Fernandes, Agostinho C. Rosa.

Related Posts:

1. Swarm Paintings: Non-Human Art

2. The Working of a Bird Swarm

3. Adaptive Routing taking Cues from Stigmergy in Ants

Possibly Related:

Gödel, Escher, Bach: A Mental Space Odyssey

]]> http://naughtthought.wordpress.com/?p=77 Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:18:24 +0000 naughtthought http://naughtthought.wordpress.com/?p=77

A fairly recent study to verify the existence of non-conscious effects in the brain entailed a subject being flashed with a fearful face so quickly (33 milliseconds) that it could not be consciously registered. Yet, as caught on a high res MRI, the face had an observable effect - causing anxiety in the test subject. Similar to Benjamin Libet's studies and others which have verified his findings, it appears that the unconscious or subconscious or non-conscious, registers and causes effects prior to conscious thought.

In their text Biology of Freedom: Neural Plasticity and the Unconscious, Francois Ansermet and Pierre Magistretti differentiate between the unconscious and the non-conscious. For Ansermet, the non-conscious is procedural whereas the unconscious is the fantasy trace of experience which, like the coincidence of simultaneously fired post-synapses, glaciates multiple signifiers in ways that are further and further from the signified.

Shifting to the latest volume of Collapse the question arises: are the un-seemingly un-formed oozes and horrors of the universe simply the formed horrors but at a faster pace? Is this the divide between Terror of horror versus the lurk of horror? Could the horrifying event, slowed down, been taken from the unconscious and put into the conscious - would this be the forbidden knowledge of Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos?

At the beginning of Lovecraft's Call of the Cthulu he writes:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

Yet the reactions to 'godless' science seems to be more of a mixed bag of reactionary strategies: new age obscurantism, the theological term in philosophy, and, of course, the rampancy of the correlationist impulse. Houllebecq quotes Lovecraft on his cosmicism:

"The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure 'Victorian fictions'. Only egotism exists."

While Meillassoux does not engage Lovecraft directly in Collapse IV, it seems that After Finitude has much in common with the foremer's cosmicism - that humans are simply insects that supplant their idealism on the cosmos. Lovecraft's cosmicism, as different from nihilism, is, instead of a complete meaninglessness, a great leveling of meaning and the aforementioned egotism, no doubt, finds a comfortable home in correlationism. Horror then, is beyond our individual fragility and is about a trace in humanity's fragility itself where terror is immediately effecting our egotism. It is obvious then that, for terror, it is more than often death whereas for horror it is insanity.

The tipping point here is that of the figure of the last girl or the sole survivor, which I've previously discussed. That is, once the terror is over, the last girl lives to carry on the trauma of what happened. While this seems out of the realm of the terrible it does not qualify for the realm of the horrible.

Put most directly: terror is not knowing, horror is knowing too much. However, there is a level of cross over. The horror, in the realm of terror, is the discovery of the body, it is the knowing too much which leads back to not knowing (in relation to the self) hence 'am I next?' The terror of horror, is the sight of the thing which cannot be definately described. As I discussed previously in terms of trauma, the figure of the serial killer moves from the full trauma (the human caused creation of the killer) to the result of the empty trauma, the lone survivor who was chosen, at least in the best slashers, arbitrarily.

In terms of trauma, horror moves in the opposite direction, the pointless existence of horrible things, not caused by humans, generate full traumas - causing complex networks of insanity in the victims - a mythos. In the case of terror - the person survives to tell the story for the benefit of others and themselves - in horror the story is hidden and buried, no one benefits from it.

The question then is what of films which display the genesis of what could become the horrible? That is monster movies in which the birth of the monster, or monsters, is obfuscated by the film's end - that there may or may not be anyone left to tell the unbelievable tale. We are more used to monster tales being public whether massively (Cloverfield, Godzilla films, King Kong films, War of the Worlds and its imitators, Romero's zombie films and the like) or more locally (vampires, werewolves, witches et cetera). Two of the examples that stick out here are Neil Marshall's The Descent, which I discussed at length here and John Carpenter's The Thing. These films reject the participation in legend and remain self contained horrors which are terrifying (Thacker in Collapse IV makes a similar point - p. 89).

Carpenter's The Thing is particularly interesting because the thing itself is between formed and formless it is a creature which, if it has an orginary form, we never see it - throughout the film it, in various states of accuracy, copies the creatures around it. The thing is the embodiment of the organic excess of the organic, the drive's axis of iteration. While this is the drive axis that is fitting to horror, and that which is key to speculative materialism as articulated by Brassier, terror's axis of alteration, the transcription of trauma, is neglected. This is clear when, at the end of Nihil Unbound, Brassier equates Trieb with only repetition towards death.

Thus we end up somewhere between Benjamin Noy's positing of the horror of time, the experience of time as a kind of horrendous all at once, and a potential buggering of Virlio's notion of dromology. That is, where Brassier points to the correlationist separation of time and space, we might point out his removal of the experiential of effects of time - as a sharp terror and a creeping horror.

Susan Greenfield's alarmist claims, which she admits are not based on any hard research, are reported by Peter Wilson in today's Australian AND by John Cornwell in today's Age - Good Weekend

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23858718-28737,00.html

Quoting from her new book, "ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century" - we find that "For the first time in human history, individuality
could be obliterated in favour of a passive state, reacting to a flood
of incoming sensations: - a yuck and wow mentality characterised by a
premium on momentary experience as the landscape of the brain shifts
into one where personalised brain connectivity is either not functional
or absent altogether."

I guess I'll need to read the book to find out what "personalised brain connectivity" is, and why it is to be valued over and above other sorts of brain connectivity.

But what I do find a bit hard to take is that her speculations are very much coming from a romantic idea about the past and past media forms, such as the book...

Older generations - she describes them as "the people of the book" -
she claims have developed powers of imagination, empathy, context and meaning
which she fears will be much reduced in "the people of the screen".

"I think we are going to have the next generation with shorter
attention spans and being less risk-averse than other generations,
perhaps even reckless. They will be people who are more hedonistic and tend to live for
the moment, a life that is more sensory and less cognitive. People who
have a less robust sense of their own identity and are therefore more
easily persuaded or swayed by the wrong kind of things, as we see
already in the way people are easily persuaded into movements nowadays. People with less meaning to their lives, possibly, and less of a
strong life narrative, so they may be happy rather than fulfilled:
there is a difference."

So if you play computer games, watch out ! - Chances are you will be UNFULFILLED!

She also labours under the misunderstanding that computer games lack sophisticated narratives, and that game players are not engaged in complex meaning-creation themselves as they play ...

"It becomes a matter of process over content," Greenfield says. "The
game player might be trying to save a princess from a dragon, and that
becomes the aim: simply the process of freeing the princess, rather
than any mental content. If, on the other hand, you were reading a book
about the princess, you would use your imagination and get to know and
care about her."

Now I'm not so sure that my imagination is any more active when I read a novelist's carefully chosen words than when I role-play as a princess in a computer game where I need to save her family and kingdom from external threats.

Seth Grant, an Australian neuroscientist at Cambridge University,
says the problem with scientifically confirming theories such as
Greenfield's is that so little is known about the true workings of the
brain, a point that Greenfield makes herself. "At the moment all we can
do is observe correlations between things rather than establishing what
is the trigger and what is the cause," Grant says.

"Professor Greenfield may be right that dopamine suppresses other
functions in the prefrontal cortex, but the question we can't answer is
how big the effect will be and whether it will change executive
functions (more complex mental activities such as imagining). We would
have to develop all sorts of new diagnostic tools to be able to answer
the questions she is posing, and that is not going to happen for a long
time."

__

Enough on the negatives of using ICTs, lets turn to some positive claims spending time in "Virtual Reality".

Matthew Ricketson in his excellent blog, "Media Matters", reports on The Healing Properties of Virtual Reality.

http://blogs.theage.com.au/mediamatters/archives/2008/06/post_1.html

In a recent article published in 'The New Yorker'. Sue Halpern reported on a joint military-university program that is using virtual reality games to treat the nearly 20 per cent of American veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who, according to a recent study by the RAND Corporation, are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

The idea of the therapy is to introduce a war veteran to the virtual reality environment, but only gradually and at a pace they can handle. The veteran re-lives the experience repeatedly; first they see a simulation of it, then hear battle noises, then feel their chair vibrating, and even smell the war.

The aim of the virtual reality therapy program is to isolate the actual traumatic memories, deal with them and restore neutrality to ordinary events in the person's life.

Well, lots more research into the power of ICTs and their positive and negative effects on our brains is certainly required. For now, I think we need to be careful not to get too alarmist and sensational about the effects of the media, while looking to fully understand the implications of using new technologies as they arise.