Seven properties of self-organization in the human brain

The principle of self-organization has acquired a fundamental significance in the newly emerging field of computational philosophy. Self-organizing systems have been described in various domains in science and philosophy including physics, neuroscience, biology and medicine, ecology, and sociology. While system architecture and their general purpose may depend on domain-specific concepts and definitions, there are (at least) seven key properties of self-organization clearly identified in brain systems: 1) modular connectivity, 2) unsupervised learning, 3) adaptive ability, 4) functional resiliency, 5) functional plasticity, 6) from-local-to-global functional organization, and 7) dynamic system growth. These are defined here in the light of insight from neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience and Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART), and physics to show that self-organization achieves stability and functional plasticity while minimizing structural system complexity. A specific example informed by empirical research is discussed to illustrate how modularity, adaptive learning, and dynamic network growth enable stable yet plastic somatosensory representation for human grip force control. Implications for the design of “strong” artificial intelligence in robotics are brought forward

Overcoming Roadblocks to Learning

{Excerpt} The gulf between the ideal type of a learning organization and the state of affairs in typical bilateral and multilateral development agencies remains huge. Defining roadblocks, however numerous they may be, is half the battle to removing them—it might make them part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Organizational learning is collective learning by individuals, and the fundamental phenomena of individual learning apply to organizations. However, organizational learning has distinctive characteristics concerning what is learned, how it is learned, and the adjustments needed to enhance learning. These owe to the fact that an organization is, by general definition, a collective whose individual constituents work to achieve a common goal from discrete operating and supporting units. Practices bring different perspectives and cultures to bear and shape data, information, and knowledge flows. Political considerations are the most serious impediment to becoming a learning organization. However, by understanding more fully what obstacles to learning can exist in a complex organization in a complex environment, one can circumscribe the problem space and create enabling environments for a more positive future. Such environments would facilitate self-organization, exploration of the space of possibilities, generative feedback, emergence, and coevolution.They would create an explanatory framework and facilitate action

Embodied cognition through cultural interaction

In this short paper we describe a robotic setup to study the self-organization of conceptualisation and language. What distinguishes this project from others is that we envision a robot with specic cognitive capacities, but without resorting to any pre-programmed representations or conceptualisations. The key to this all is self-organization and enculturation. We report preliminary results on learning motor behaviours through imitation, and sketch how the language plays a pivoting role in constructing world representations

Organisasi Pembelajar (Learning Organization)Dalam Pencapaian Diri Perawat RSI Jakarta Cempaka Putih

Learning organization is a group of people who expands their capability perpetually to create their desired outcome. The learning is able to construct their new thinking model, establish an accord of collective aspiration unreservedly, and build a learning process group repeatedly. The aim of this study was to analysize the relationship between learning organization and self improvement of nurses in RSI Jakarta Cempaka Putih . The design was aobsevasional analitic with crossectional approach. Using Sampling wassystematicrandom samplingwith anumber of228 people. Retrievalof data using aquestionnaireinstrument. The instruments ware learning organization and self improvement questionare. The finding indicated that 56,6% of the nurses perception of learning organization were good, and 62,7% of their improvement were excellence. It was concluded that there was a significance correlation between learning organization and self improvement. The learning organization perception of them had strong relationship with learning dynamic, empowering human resources, managing knowledge. According to the workforce powerful, the manager is supposed to set up a group of learning, organize learning dynamic through training and increase nurses role in order to gets their self achievement

Self-Organised Schools

Self-Organised Schools: Educational Leadership and Innovative Learning Environments describes the results of the research we carried out at fourteen Italian schools that highlight how there is a positive correlation between the capabilities of school self-organization and the innovativeness of learning environments: in other words, the more self-organized schools are, the more innovative learning environments are. The results of this work are part of the strand of research of bottom-up emergency and self-organization, an extremely fruitful trend as shown by Sugata Mitra, the founder of the Self-Organized Learning Environments, according to whom, "education is a self-organized system where learning is an emerging phenomenon". This book gives new insights on self-organization studies, and most of all, to the idea that change - organizational and educational innovation - sparks from the bottom. This book is aimed specifically at school principals of all levels, scholastic reformers, educational scholars, organisation and management consultants who want to innovate learning and management of learning. These actors will benefit drawing useful examples from more than thirty different learning environments worldwide, fourteen examples of schools that self-organize, two frameworks - and two ready-to-use questionnaires - measuring the innovativeness of a learning environment, and the capability of a school to self-organize. Self-organization is the most fascinating future of innovative principal

Students’ Self-Directed Learning at Language University

The article is devoted to the problem of self-directed learning of students of Language University. Self-organization is an integral characteristic of personality development. The authors studied the components of self-organization: self-assessment, some personal qualities, etc. Some peculiarities of self-organization of Language University students were revealed with the standardized questionnaires and questionnaires based on self-assessment. It turned out that students with high cognitive capacity have insufficient level of self-organization, low cognitive activity. Self-organization is formed in the process of independent work and autonomous learning. The authors consider the problem of educational autonomy development of students while learning foreign languages as an interdisciplinary problem, as a subject area of linguopedagogics. The research also studied methodological strategies for learning new vocabulary. The development of learning style activity depends on certain personal qualities related to native traits. The research about self-directed leaning of students is the basis for the development of pedagogical activities with the aim of developing the optimal style of educational methods. The content of this research is both theoretical and practical; we are creating conditions for effective cognitive activity

Learning roadmaps for Higher Education

An integrated platform for the support of teaching activities as been developed and deployed at the Aveiro Norte Polytechnic School of the University of Aveiro. In this paper we present an approach to Learning Roadmaps for Higher Education based on this platform. The aprend.e platform – Electronic Integrated System for Learning and Training - has at its core a Learning Management System with a number of plugins. It represents a new challenge for the University of Aveiro for higher education and is already being at its core is the concept of learning roadmaps that act upon two fundamental axes: education and learning. For the teachers, it aims at becoming a self-supporting tool that stimulates the organization and management of the course materials (lectures, presentations, multimedia content, and evaluation materials, amongst others). For the students, the learning roadmap aims at promoting self-study and supervised study, endowing the pupil with the capabilities to find the relevant information and to capture the concepts in the study materials. The outcome will be a stimulating learning process together with an organized management of those materials