Emotional advisor to help children with autism in social communication

The deficit or impairment in the ability to rationalize emotional states is known as mind-blindness. This condition is seen to be the key inhibitor of social and emotional intelligence for autistic people. Autism is a spectrum of neuro-developmental conditions which affects one’s social functioning, communication and is often accompanied with repetitive behaviours and obsessive interests. Inabilities resulting from mind-blindness include gauging the interest of other parties during conversations, withdrawal from social contact, oblivion to social cues, in difference to people’s opinions and incomprehensible non-verbal communication. The existing assistive devices and tools mostly serve as remedial tools that provide a learning environment for autistic children to learn about the norms of social behaviour. However, these tools lack the capability to operate in conjunction with real-world situations. An idea is proposed that aims to fulfill this need. We propose a portable device which is able to assist autistic people in communication in real-life situations. We believe that this portable device can help to narrow the gap between us and the world of autism through assisted communication. In this paper, we present one part of this device which is called Emotional Advisor to assist autistic children in engaging in meaningful conversations where people are able to ascertain how they are feeling during communication

Language and Cognition Interaction Neural Mechanisms

How language and cognition interact in thinking? Is language just used for communication of completed thoughts, or is it fundamental for thinking? Existing approaches have not led to a computational theory. We develop a hypothesis that language and cognition are two separate but closely interacting mechanisms. Language accumulates cultural wisdom; cognition develops mental representations modeling surrounding world and adapts cultural knowledge to concrete circumstances of life. Language is acquired from surrounding language “ready-made” and therefore can be acquired early in life. This early acquisition of language in childhood encompasses the entire hierarchy from sounds to words, to phrases, and to highest concepts existing in culture. Cognition is developed from experience. Yet cognition cannot be acquired from experience alone; language is a necessary intermediary, a “teacher.” A mathematical model is developed; it overcomes previous difficulties and leads to a computational theory. This model is consistent with Arbib's “language prewired brain” built on top of mirror neuron system. It models recent neuroimaging data about cognition, remaining unnoticed by other theories. A number of properties of language and cognition are explained, which previously seemed mysterious, including influence of language grammar on cultural evolution, which may explain specifics of English and Arabic cultures

Dissipation and spontaneous symmetry breaking in brain dynamics

We compare the predictions of the dissipative quantum model of brain with neurophysiological data collected from electroencephalograms resulting from high-density arrays fixed on the surfaces of primary sensory and limbic areas of trained rabbits and cats. Functional brain imaging in relation to behavior reveals the formation of coherent domains of synchronized neuronal oscillatory activity and phase transitions predicted by the dissipative model.Comment: Restyled, slight changes in title and abstract, updated bibliography, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. Vol. 41 (2008) in prin

Resting state neural networks and energy metabolism

The human brain is an energy hungry organ. How that brain manages its energy consumption in maintaining its health and executing sensori-motor and cognitive functions is an important but overlooked research area in contemporary cognitive neuroscience. It is argued here that the principal method whereby the human brain manages its energy utilization is through maintaining a relatively elevated level of activity in what can be referred to as 'resting state networks' (RSN). The elevated energy consumption in the human brain's varied RSNs is driven and maintained by a physiological mechanism we call the Frame-Formation Energy Cycle (FFEC). Running the FFEC cycle is metabolically expensive and therefore offers a mechanism to explain the increased energy consumption in human-brain RSNs as compared to regions not involved in such networks. © 2017 IEEE

An Explanation to Individual Knowledge and Behavior Based on Empirical Substrates

Using recent findings from modern empirical disciplines and mainly building on F.A.Hayek’s thoughts, the paper gives a definition of knowledge in accord with the Austrian School’s tradition, and basing on the definition, it sums up three behavior assumptions and a framework on explaining individual behavior and expounds ideas on hierarchical knowledge and its change in real situations. By this way, the paper believes that the Austrian School can be greatly advanced with the help of modern empirical findings.knowledge, shared knowledge, hierarchy, behavioral assumption, reduced framework, empirical foundation

A dynamic model of interactions between conscious and unconscious

This paper advocates that some limits of the rational agent hypothesis result from the improper assumption that one individual should be modeled as a single rational agent. We model an individual composed of two autonomous and interacting structures, conscious and unconscious. Each agent utility form depends both on external signals and other structures' actions. The perception of the signal depends on its recipient and its grid of interpretation. We study both the static and dynamic version of this interaction mechanism. We show that the dynamics may display instability, depending on the structures interactions'strength. However, if unconscious has a strategic advantage, greater stability is reached. By manipulating other structures�goals, the strategic agent can lead the whole system to an equilibrium closer to its own optimum. This result shows that some switch in the conscious�objective can appear. Behaviors that can't be explained with a single utility can thus be rational if we add a rational unconscious agent. Our results justify our hypothesis of a rational interacting unconscious. It supports the widening of the notion of rationality to multi-rationnality in interaction.dual agent; conscious and unconscious; rationality; multi-rationality; emotions; choices and preferences; multi-agent model; consistency;