41,367 research outputs found
Roman roads: The hierarchical endosymbiosis of cognitive modules
Serial endosymbiosis theory provides a unifying paradigm for examining the interaction of cognitive modules at vastly different scales of biological, social, and cultural organization. A trivial but not unimportant model associates a dual information source with a broad class of cognitive processes, and punctuated phenomena akin to phase transitions in physical systems, and associated coevolutionary processes, emerge as consequences of the homology between information source uncertainty and free energy density. The dynamics, including patterns of punctuation similar to ecosystem resilience transitions, are large dominated by the availability of 'Roman roads' constituting channels for the transmission of information between modules
Interacting Attention-gated Recurrent Networks for Recommendation
Capturing the temporal dynamics of user preferences over items is important
for recommendation. Existing methods mainly assume that all time steps in
user-item interaction history are equally relevant to recommendation, which
however does not apply in real-world scenarios where user-item interactions can
often happen accidentally. More importantly, they learn user and item dynamics
separately, thus failing to capture their joint effects on user-item
interactions. To better model user and item dynamics, we present the
Interacting Attention-gated Recurrent Network (IARN) which adopts the attention
model to measure the relevance of each time step. In particular, we propose a
novel attention scheme to learn the attention scores of user and item history
in an interacting way, thus to account for the dependencies between user and
item dynamics in shaping user-item interactions. By doing so, IARN can
selectively memorize different time steps of a user's history when predicting
her preferences over different items. Our model can therefore provide
meaningful interpretations for recommendation results, which could be further
enhanced by auxiliary features. Extensive validation on real-world datasets
shows that IARN consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods.Comment: Accepted by ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge
Management (CIKM), 201
Adaptive performance optimization for large-scale traffic control systems
In this paper, we study the problem of optimizing (fine-tuning) the design parameters of large-scale traffic control systems that are composed of distinct and mutually interacting modules. This problem usually requires a considerable amount of human effort and time to devote to the successful deployment and operation of traffic control systems due to the lack of an automated well-established systematic approach. We investigate the adaptive fine-tuning algorithm for determining the set of design parameters of two distinct mutually interacting modules of the traffic-responsive urban control (TUC) strategy, i.e., split and cycle, for the large-scale urban road network of the city of Chania, Greece. Simulation results are presented, demonstrating that the network performance in terms of the daily mean speed, which is attained by the proposed adaptive optimization methodology, is significantly better than the original TUC system in the case in which the aforementioned design parameters are manually fine-tuned to virtual perfection by the system operators
Consciousness, cognition, and the hierarchy of context: extending the global neuronal workspace model
We adapt an information theory analysis of interacting cognitive biological and social modules to the problem of the global neuronal workspace, the new standard neuroscience paradigm for consciousness. Tunable punctuation emerges in a natural way, suggesting the possibility of fitting appropriate phase transition power law, and away from transition, generalized Onsager relation expressions, to observational data on conscious reaction. The development can be extended in a straightforward manner to include psychosocial stress, culture, or other cognitive modules which constitute a structured, embedding hierarchy of contextual constraints acting at a slower rate than neuronal function itself. This produces a 'biopsychosociocultural' model of individual consciousness that, while otherwise quite close to the standard treatment, meets compelling philosophical and other objections to brain-only descriptions
Model of Brain Activation Predicts the Neural Collective Influence Map of the Brain
Efficient complex systems have a modular structure, but modularity does not
guarantee robustness, because efficiency also requires an ingenious interplay
of the interacting modular components. The human brain is the elemental
paradigm of an efficient robust modular system interconnected as a network of
networks (NoN). Understanding the emergence of robustness in such modular
architectures from the interconnections of its parts is a long-standing
challenge that has concerned many scientists. Current models of dependencies in
NoN inspired by the power grid express interactions among modules with fragile
couplings that amplify even small shocks, thus preventing functionality.
Therefore, we introduce a model of NoN to shape the pattern of brain
activations to form a modular environment that is robust. The model predicts
the map of neural collective influencers (NCIs) in the brain, through the
optimization of the influence of the minimal set of essential nodes responsible
for broadcasting information to the whole-brain NoN. Our results suggest new
intervention protocols to control brain activity by targeting influential
neural nodes predicted by network theory.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure
When Spandrels Become Arches: Neural crosstalk and the evolution of consciousness
Once cognition is recognized as having a 'dual' information source, the information theory chain rule implies that isolating coresident information sources from crosstalk requires more metabolic free energy than permitting correlation. This provides conditions for an evolutionary exaptation leading to the rapid, shifting global neural broadcasts of consciousness. The argument is quite analogous to the well-studied exaptation of noise to trigger stochastic resonance amplification in neurons and neuronal subsystems. Astrobiological implications are obvious
Darwin's Rainbow: Evolutionary radiation and the spectrum of consciousness
Evolution is littered with paraphyletic convergences: many roads lead to functional Romes. We propose here another example - an equivalence class structure factoring the broad realm of possible realizations of the Baars Global Workspace consciousness model. The construction suggests many different physiological systems can support rapidly shifting, sometimes highly tunable, temporary assemblages of interacting unconscious cognitive modules. The discovery implies various animal taxa exhibiting behaviors we broadly recognize as conscious are, in fact, simply expressing different forms of the same underlying phenomenon. Mathematically, we find much slower, and even multiple simultaneous, versions of the basic structure can operate over very long timescales, a kind of paraconsciousness often ascribed to group phenomena. The variety of possibilities, a veritable rainbow, suggests minds today may be only a small surviving fraction of ancient evolutionary radiations - bush phylogenies of consciousness and paraconsciousness. Under this scenario, the resulting diversity was subsequently pruned by selection and chance extinction. Though few traces of the radiation may be found in the direct fossil record, exaptations and vestiges are scattered across the living mind. Humans, for instance, display an uncommonly profound synergism between individual consciousness and their embedding cultural heritages, enabling efficient Lamarkian adaptation
Crosstalk and the spectrum of biological global broadcasts: Toward generalization of the Baars consciousness model across physiological subsystems
Once cognitive biological phenomena are recognized as necessarily having 'dual' information sources, it is easy to show that the information theory chain rule implies isolating coresident information sources from crosstalk requires more metabolic free energy than permitting correlation. This provides conditions for an evolutionary exaptation leading to dynamic global broadcasts of interacting cognitive biological processes analogous to, but slower than, consciousness, itself included within the paradigm. The argument is closely analogous to the well-studied exaptation of noise to trigger stochastic resonance amplification in physiological systems
Culture and generalized inattentional blindness
A recent mathematical treatment of Baars' Global Workspace consciousness model, much in the spirit of Dretske's communication theory analysis of high level mental function, is used to study the effects of embedding cultural heritage on a generalized form of inattentional blindness. Culture should express itself quite distinctly in this basic psychophysical phenomenon, acting across a variety of sensory and other modalities, because the limited syntactic and grammatical 'bandpass' of the topological rate distortion manifold characterizing conscious attention is itself strongly sculpted by the constraints of cultural context
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