Challenging the classical notion of time in cognition: a quantum perspective

All mental representations change with time. A baseline intuition is that mental representations have specific values at different time points, which may be more or less accessible, depending on noise, forgetting processes etc. We present a radically alternative, motivated by recent research using the mathematics from quantum theory for cognitive modelling. Such cognitive models raise the possibility that certain possibilities or events may be incompatible, so that perfect knowledge of one necessitates uncertainty for the others. In the context of time dependence, in physics, this issue is explored with the so-called temporal Bell (TB) or Leggett-Garg inequalities. We consider in detail the theoretical and empirical challenges involved in exploring the TB inequalities in the context of cognitive systems. One interesting conclusion is that we believe the study of the TB inequalities to be empirically more constrained in psychology, than in physics. Specifically, we show how the TB inequalities, as applied to cognitive systems, can be derived from two simple assumptions, Cognitive Realism and Cognitive Completeness. We discuss possible implications of putative violations of the TB inequalities for cognitive models and our understanding of time in cognition in general. Overall, the paper provides a surprising, novel direction, in relation to how time should be conceptualized in cognition

Indigenous Health – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States - Laying Claim to a Future that Embraces Health for Us All.

Improving the health of all peoples has been a call across the globe for many decades and unfortunately remains relevant today, particularly given the large disparities in health status of peoples found around the world. Rather than differences in health, or health inequalities, we use a different term, health inequities. This is so as mere differences in health (or inequalities ) can be common in societies and do not necessarily reflect unfair social policies or practices. For example, natural ageing implies older people are more prone to illness. Yet, when differences are systematic, socially produced and unfair, these are considered health inequities. Certainly making judgments on what is systematic, socially produced and unfair, reflects value judgments and merit open debate. We are making explicit in this paper what our judgments are, and the basis for these judgment

From ‘Invisible Problem’ to Global Priority: The Inclusion of Mental Health in the Sustainable Development Goals

Perceptions regarding the importance of mental health are shifting at a global level. Once described as an ‘invisible problem’ in international development, mental health is now being framed as one of the most pressing development issues of our time. Concern over the historical absence of mental health from the development agenda — despite its being regarded as a major obstacle to development — has led to its recent inclusion in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article critically examines three intersecting axes key to its inclusion in the SDGs: 1) the conceptualization and calculation of the contribution of mental disorder to the global burden of disease; 2) the quantification of mental disorder as an economic burden; and 3) the relationship between mental distress and poverty. The article highlights the urgent need to foster a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between mental health and development, and shows how, at times, interventions in the two fields work together in producing reductionist, economistic, individualized and psychologized responses to poverty

Emotional reactions to the outcomes of decisions: The role of counterfactual thought in the experience of regret and disappointment

decision making;consumer behavior

Overcoming Noise in Entanglement Distribution

Noise can be considered the natural enemy of quantum information. An often implied benefit of high-dimensional entanglement is its increased resilience to noise. However, manifesting this potential in an experimentally meaningful fashion is challenging and has never been done before. In infinite dimensional spaces, discretisation is inevitable and renders the effective dimension of quantum states a tunable parameter. Owing to advances in experimental techniques and theoretical tools, we demonstrate an increased resistance to noise by identifying two pathways to exploit high-dimensional entangled states. Our study is based on two separate experiments utilising canonical spatio-temporal properties of entangled photon pairs. Following these different pathways to noise resilience, we are able to certify entanglement in the photonic orbital-angular-momentum and energy-time degrees of freedom up to noise conditions corresponding to a noise fraction of 72 % and 92 % respectively. Our work paves the way towards practical quantum communication systems that are able to surpass current noise and distance limitations, while not compromising on potential device-independence.Comment: 12 pages main text, 7 pages supplementary information, 6 figure

Poverty, Income Inequality and Health

The purpose of this report is to consider the legitimacy of the assumption that communities or societies with more unequal income distributions have poorer health outcomes. We present a critical review of the existing international literature on the relationship between income, income inequality and health, in terms of conceptual approaches, research methods and the policy implications drawn from it. Where possible, we also offer some guidance for judging between policy priorities based on the relative importance of income inequality versus other potential causal factors in determining population levels of health. An overview of the potential relationship between income, income inequality and health is set out, followed by a discussion of the methodological and technical issues required to explore these links. A literature review of what we consider to be the key contributions in the income inequality - health debate is presented, as is a re-analysis of data derived from Chapter 3 of Social Inequalities in Health: New Zealand 1999, which focuses on income, income inequality and health. We conclude that the relative effect of income inequality per se as a determinant of population health has been greatly exaggerated. The frequently observed association between income inequality and health at the regional level is likely to be a by-product of the non-linear relationship between individual income and health, although we cannot dismiss the possibility that income inequality may also act as a marker for other area characteristics that influence health. We stress that a life course approach is paramount for any study into the relationship between poverty and health, while the use of multi-level data analysis is fundamental in attempting to establish the relationship between income distribution and area level health status.poverty, income, income inequality, population health, health inequalities, life course studies, aggregate studies, multi-level studies.