178 research outputs found

    Conversations on Empathy

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    In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy — be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" – others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice

    Neural foundations of cooperative social interactions

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    The embodied-embedded-enactive-extended (4E) approach to study cognition suggests that interaction with the world is a crucial component of our cognitive processes. Most of our time, we interact with other people. Therefore, studying cognition without interaction is incomplete. Until recently, social neuroscience has only focused on studying isolated human and animal brains, leaving interaction unexplored. To fill this gap, we studied interacting participants, focusing on both intra- and inter-brain (hyperscanning) neural activity. In the first study, we invited dyads to perform a visual task in both a cooperative and a competitive context while we measured EEG. We found that mid-frontal activity around 200-300 ms after receiving monetary rewards was sensitive to social context and differed between cooperative and competitive situations. In the second study, we asked participants to coordinate their movements with each other and with a robotic partner. We found significantly stronger EEG amplitudes at frontocentral electrodes when people interacted with a robotic partner. Lastly, we performed a comprehensive literature review and the first meta-analysis in the emerging field of hyperscanning that validated it as a method to study social interaction. Taken together, our results showed that adding a second participant (human or AI/robotic) fostered our understanding of human cognition. We learned that the activity at frontocentral electrodes is sensitive to social context and type of partner (human or robotic). In both studies, the participants’ interaction was required to show these novel neural processes involved in action monitoring. Similarly, studying inter-brain neural activity allows for the exploration of new aspects of cognition. Many cognitive functions involved in successful social interactions are accompanied by neural synchrony between brains, suggesting the extended form of our cognition

    Exploring Virtual Reality and Doppelganger Avatars for the Treatment of Chronic Back Pain

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    Cognitive-behavioral models of chronic pain assume that fear of pain and subsequent avoidance behavior contribute to pain chronicity and the maintenance of chronic pain. In chronic back pain (CBP), avoidance of movements often plays a major role in pain perseverance and interference with daily life activities. In treatment, avoidance is often addressed by teaching patients to reduce pain behaviors and increase healthy behaviors. The current project explored the use of personalized virtual characters (doppelganger avatars) in virtual reality (VR), to influence motor imitation and avoidance, fear of pain and experienced pain in CBP. We developed a method to create virtual doppelgangers, to animate them with movements captured from real-world models, and to present them to participants in an immersive cave virtual environment (CAVE) as autonomous movement models for imitation. Study 1 investigated interactions between model and observer characteristics in imitation behavior of healthy participants. We tested the hypothesis that perceived affiliative characteristics of a virtual model, such as similarity to the observer and likeability, would facilitate observers’ engagement in voluntary motor imitation. In a within-subject design (N=33), participants were exposed to four virtual characters of different degrees of realism and observer similarity, ranging from an abstract stickperson to a personalized doppelganger avatar designed from 3d scans of the observer. The characters performed different trunk movements and participants were asked to imitate these. We defined functional ranges of motion (ROM) for spinal extension (bending backward, BB), lateral flexion (bending sideward, BS) and rotation in the horizontal plane (RH) based on shoulder marker trajectories as behavioral indicators of imitation. Participants’ ratings on perceived avatar appearance were recorded in an Autonomous Avatar Questionnaire (AAQ), based on an explorative factor analysis. Linear mixed effects models revealed that for lateral flexion (BS), a facilitating influence of avatar type on ROM was mediated by perceived identification with the avatar including avatar likeability, avatar-observer-similarity and other affiliative characteristics. These findings suggest that maximizing model-observer similarity may indeed be useful to stimulate observational modeling. Study 2 employed the techniques developed in study 1 with participants who suffered from CBP and extended the setup with real-world elements, creating an immersive mixed reality. The research question was whether virtual doppelgangers could modify motor behaviors, pain expectancy and pain. In a randomized controlled between-subject design, participants observed and imitated an avatar (AVA, N=17) or a videotaped model (VID, N=16) over three sessions, during which the movements BS and RH as well as a new movement (moving a beverage crate) were shown. Again, self-reports and ROMs were used as measures. The AVA group reported reduced avoidance with no significant group differences in ROM. Pain expectancy increased in AVA but not VID over the sessions. Pain and limitations did not significantly differ. We observed a moderation effect of group, with prior pain expectancy predicting pain and avoidance in the VID but not in the AVA group. This can be interpreted as an effect of personalized movement models decoupling pain behavior from movement-related fear and pain expectancy by increasing pain tolerance and task persistence. Our findings suggest that personalized virtual movement models can stimulate observational modeling in general, and that they can increase pain tolerance and persistence in chronic pain conditions. Thus, they may provide a tool for exposure and exercise treatments in cognitive behavioral treatment approaches to CBP

    Actor & Avatar: A Scientific and Artistic Catalog

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    What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? Actor & Avatar addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of "technical others" and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific collaboration with extensive visual material

    Tool mastering today – an interdisciplinary perspective

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    Tools have coined human life, living conditions, and culture. Recognizing the cognitive architecture underlying tool use would allow us to comprehend its evolution, development, and physiological basis. However, the cognitive underpinnings of tool mastering remain little understood in spite of long-time research in neuroscientific, psychological, behavioral and technological fields. Moreover, the recent transition of tool use to the digital domain poses new challenges for explaining the underlying processes. In this interdisciplinary review, we propose three building blocks of tool mastering: (A) perceptual and motor abilities integrate to tool manipulation knowledge, (B) perceptual and cognitive abilities to functional tool knowledge, and (C) motor and cognitive abilities to means-end knowledge about tool use. This framework allows for integrating and structuring research findings and theoretical assumptions regarding the functional architecture of tool mastering via behavior in humans and non-human primates, brain networks, as well as computational and robotic models. An interdisciplinary perspective also helps to identify open questions and to inspire innovative research approaches. The framework can be applied to studies on the transition from classical to modern, non-mechanical tools and from analogue to digital user-tool interactions in virtual reality, which come with increased functional opacity and sensorimotor decoupling between tool user, tool, and target. By working towards an integrative theory on the cognitive architecture of the use of tools and technological assistants, this review aims at stimulating future interdisciplinary research avenues

    Kant and Artificial Intelligence

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    How are artificial intelligence (AI) and the strong claims made by their philosophical representatives to be understood and evaluated from a Kantian perspective? Conversely, what can we learn from AI and its functions about Kantian philosophy’s claims to validity? This volume focuses on various aspects, such as the self, the spirit, self-consciousness, ethics, law, and aesthetics to answer these questions

    Les piliers perceptuels du cinéma d’animation

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    Toute discipline devrait reposer sur des bases théoriques solides ; mais ce n’est pas nécessairement le cas des études en animation. Au mieux, la pratique est encadrée par douze « principes » d’animation codifiés dans The Illusion of Life (1985) par deux animateurs de Disney, Ollie Johnson et Frank Thomas. Parmi ces principes, certains s’appliquent au cinéma en général ou sont techniques ; alors que d’autres visent l’essentiel artistique de l’animation : comment produire des mouvements fluides, expressifs et crédibles. Les principes sont utilisés parce qu’ils fonctionnent ; mais personne du domaine n’a tenté de déterminer les mécanismes perceptifs qui expliqueraient pourquoi ils fonctionnent. Pire, la seule « théorie » généralement acceptée par le milieu prétend toujours que la « persistance rétinienne » explique la perception de mouvement au cinéma; et cette théorie a été démontrée fausse, il y a plus de quarante ans. Le premier objectif de cette thèse est d’identifier et de décrire les phénomènes perceptifs sur lesquels l’art de l’animation repose ; et, deuxièmement, de structurer ces connaissances avec de nouveaux concepts qui seront utiles sur le plan pratique, théorique et pédagogique. Cette thèse se veut transdisciplinaire et mobilise un ensemble important de connaissances hétéroclites, traitantà la fois de la vision et du cinéma. Le premier chapitre donne un aperçu des grandes théories psychologiques et cinématographiques auxquelles nous nous référerons. Ensuite, les concepts psychophysiques et anatomiques élémentaires de la vision seront décrits au chapitre 2. Le chapitre 3 vise à démystifier la « théorie » de la persistance visuelle. Nous rappelons que l’œil et la rétine se bornent à transmettre une suite d’images au cortex qui utilise une série de procédés pour percevoir le mouvement. Au chapitre 4, nous étudierons deux types de mouvements animés (mouvement apparent de longue portée et de courte portée) et présenterons les axiomes qui les gouvernent. Le chapitre 5 amorce la deuxième partie de la thèse où nous faisons le lien entre les mécanismes de la vision et les principes d’animation de Disney. Nous présentons un modèle de notre invention qui distingue une hiérarchie de cinq paliers perceptuels en animation : 1) le mouvement apparent (décrit précédemment) ; 2) le mouvement inanimé ; 3) le mouvement animé ; 4) le mouvement émouvant (c’est-à-dire les émotions et performances) ; et 5) le monde (Umwelt) animé. Ensuite, nous examinons quelques autres « principes » qui visent à maximiser la qualité visuelle d’une animation, en particulier : la cadence, le tempo, et le principe de l’étirement et de la compression. Poursuivant dans cette voie, le chapitre 6 explore la question : « à quel degré une animation doit-elle être réaliste pour fonctionner ? ». D’abord, nous explorerons le rôle de l’exagération (principe no 10), typique des cartoons ; puis les différences fondamentales entre un mouvement « animé » effectué par une entité vivante, et les mouvements passifs associés aux objets « inanimés ». Il se trouve qu’une expérience positive repose sur une harmonisation perceptive des différents éléments d’un film en portant une attention particulière à l’apparence des yeux des personnages, car des divergences de style peuvent provoquer le phénomène de la « vallée de l’étrangeté ». Enfin, au dernier chapitre, nous proposons quatre nouveaux concepts pratiques pour guider les animateurs à créer des animations et des univers expressifs et convaincants. Ces derniers sont : 1) la molette de l’exagération, 2) la pyramide de l’exagération, 3) la cape de la crédibilité et 4) l’Umwelt animé. Nous terminons la thèse en suggérant qu’il n’est plus suffisant pour l’animation de suivre des principes pratiques sans vraiment les comprendre. Il est grand temps que l’animation, à la fois comme art et comme champ d’études, s’intéresse aux principes et illusions qui l’animent

    Applying the Free-Energy Principle to Complex Adaptive Systems

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    The free energy principle is a mathematical theory of the behaviour of self-organising systems that originally gained prominence as a unified model of the brain. Since then, the theory has been applied to a plethora of biological phenomena, extending from single-celled and multicellular organisms through to niche construction and human culture, and even the emergence of life itself. The free energy principle tells us that perception and action operate synergistically to minimize an organism’s exposure to surprising biological states, which are more likely to lead to decay. A key corollary of this hypothesis is active inference—the idea that all behavior involves the selective sampling of sensory data so that we experience what we expect to (in order to avoid surprises). Simply put, we act upon the world to fulfill our expectations. It is now widely recognized that the implications of the free energy principle for our understanding of the human mind and behavior are far-reaching and profound. To date, however, its capacity to extend beyond our brain—to more generally explain living and other complex adaptive systems—has only just begun to be explored. The aim of this collection is to showcase the breadth of the free energy principle as a unified theory of complex adaptive systems—conscious, social, living, or not

    The evolution of language: Proceedings of the Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE)

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