Emergentist View on Generative Narrative Cognition: Considering Principles of the Self-Organization of Mental Stories

We consider the essence of human intelligence to be the ability to mentally (internally) construct a world in the form of stories through interactions with external environments. Understanding the principles of this mechanism is vital for realizing a human-like and autonomous artificial intelligence, but there are extremely complex problems involved. From this perspective, we propose a conceptual-level theory for the computational modeling of generative narrative cognition. Our basic idea can be described as follows: stories are representational elements forming an agent’s mental world and are also living objects that have the power of self-organization. In this study, we develop this idea by discussing the complexities of the internal structure of a story and the organizational structure of a mental world. In particular, we classify the principles of the self-organization of a mental world into five types of generative actions, i.e., connective, hierarchical, contextual, gathering, and adaptive. An integrative cognition is explained with these generative actions in the form of a distributed multiagent system of stories

Post-narratology through computational and cognitive approaches/ Takashi Ogata and Taisuke Akimoto, editors.

"This book discusses issues of narrative-related information and communication technologies, cognitive mechanism and analyses, and theoretical perspectives on narratives and the story generation process. Focusing on emerging research as well as applications in a variety of fields including marketing, philosophy, psychology, art, and literature"--1 online resource

Steroid-responsive acute post-traumatic headache with neuroinflammation

Post-traumatic headache is a common secondary headache disorder caused by head or neck trauma. However, the etiology and management have not been established. Here, we present a unique case of steroid-responsive acute post-traumatic headache with neuroinflammation following a mild head injury.A 19-year-old female soccer player experienced persistent headache, vomiting, and low-grade fever after sustaining a mild sports-related head injury. Subsequent cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) examination and contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed leptomeningeal contrast enhancement, elevated intracranial pressure, and an increased CSF cell count. Notably, the patient tested negative for viral, fungal, tumor, and autoimmune markers, thus a diagnosis of acute post-traumatic headache with neuroinflammation was determined. Treatment with dexamethasone (8 mg/day) resulted in rapid symptom relief, enabling the patient to return to sports without symptom recurrence.This case highlights the importance of considering post-traumatic headache with neuroinflammation in patients with atypical post-head injury symptoms. Although her condition shared clinical similarities with concussions, the presence of fever accompanied with specific MRI and CSF findings offered critical diagnostic differentiators. Additionally, our report highlights the potential underdiagnosis of steroid-responsive neuroinflammation following head injury and the necessity for active differential diagnosis

Evaluation of a combination protocol of CT-first triage and active telemedicine methods by a selected team tackling COVID-19: An experimental research study

BackgroundMany health care workers around the world tackled with COVID-19, however sadly, the infection of many medical care workers were reported. To reduce the risk of infection, we launched selected team (Team COVID) of non-specialists and brought in active telemedicine method and computed tomography (CT)-first protocol. We describe our actual practice and the health status of medical doctors dealing with COVID-19 patients.MethodsBetween April 17, 2020 and May 24, 2020, 10 doctors worked with COVID-19 patients as part of Team COVID. The Team COVID doctors used a CT-first triage protocol for outpatients and telemedicine for inpatients and outpatients. We evaluated paired serum-specific antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 at the initial and end of the study duration and PCR results for SARS-CoV-2 at the end of the study duration. Furthermore, 36-item short-form of the Medical Outcome Study Questionnaire (SF-36) at the beginning and end of the study period were evaluated.ResultsTen doctors worked as Team COVID: seven internal medicine doctors and three surgeons. During the study period, Team COVID treated 165 individuals in the outpatient clinic and isolated hospitalized patients for 315 person-days. There were no positive results of serum-specific antibody testing and PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2 in Team COVID doctors. Furthermore, the SF-36 showed no deterioration in physical and mental QOL status. No in-hospital infection occurred during the study period.ConclusionsThe Team COVID fulfilled the treatment using the active telemedicine and CT-first triage protocol without in hospital infection and excess stress. The combination strategy seems acceptable for both the protection and stress relief among the medical staff