The limits of process: On (re)reading Henri Bergson

This article offers a reading of the work of Henri Bergson as it pertains to organizations through the lens of ideas drawn from critical realism. It suggests an alternative to interpretations based on a stark division between process and realist perspectives. Much of the existing literature presents a rather partial view of Bergson’s work. A review suggests some interesting parallels with themes in critical realism, notably the emergence of mind. Critical realism has a focus on process at its heart, but is also concerned with how the products of such processes become stabilized and form the conditions for action. This suggests that attention might usefully be paid to the relationship between organizational action and the sedimented practices grouped under the heading of ‘routines’. More attention to Bergson’s account of the relationship between instinct, intuition and intelligence provides a link to the social character of thought, something which can be mapped on to Archer’s work on reflexivity and the ‘internal conversation’. This suggests that our analyses need to pay attention to both memory and history, to building and dwelling, rather than the one-sided focus found in some process theory accounts

How Do You Like Me in This: User Embodiment Preferences for Companion Agents

We investigate the relationship between the embodiment of an artificial companion and user perception and interaction with it. In a Wizard of Oz study, 42 users interacted with one of two embodiments: a physical robot or a virtual agent on a screen through a role-play of secretarial tasks in an office, with the companion providing essential assistance. Findings showed that participants in both condition groups when given the choice would prefer to interact with the robot companion, mainly for its greater physical or social presence. Subjects also found the robot less annoying and talked to it more naturally. However, this preference for the robotic embodiment is not reflected in the users’ actual rating of the companion or their interaction with it. We reflect on this contradiction and conclude that in a task-based context a user focuses much more on a companion’s behaviour than its embodiment. This underlines the feasibility of our efforts in creating companions that migrate between embodiments while maintaining a consistent identity from the user’s point of view

The scope of preserved procedural memory in amnesia

The finding that patients with amnesia retain the ability to learn certain procedural skills has provided compelling evidence of multiple memory systems in the human brain, but the scope, defining features and ecological significance of the preserved mnemonic abilities have not yet been explored. Here, we tested the hypothesis that subjects with amnesia would be able to learn and retain a broad range of procedural skills, by examining their acquisition and retention performance on five novel experimental tasks. The tasks are based on real-world activities and encompass a broad range of perceptual–motor demands: (i) the weaving task involves weaving pieces of fabric from woollen strings, using a manual weaver’s loom; (ii) the geometric figures task consists of tracing geometric figures with a stylus as they move horizontally across a touch screen monitor; (iii) the control stick task involves tracking a sequence of visual target locations using a joystick control; (iv) the pouring task consists of pouring 200 ml of water from a watering can into a series of graduated cylinders, from a point 20 cm above the cylinders; and (v) the spatial sequence task involves learning an ordered sequence of pushing five spatially distributed buttons without visual guidance. Ten chronic and stable amnesic subjects (nine with bilateral medial temporal lobe damage due to herpes simplex encephalitis or anoxia, and one with thalamic stroke) and 25 matching normal comparison subjects were tested on three occasions: initial learning at time 1; retention at time 2 (24 h later); and retention at time 3 (2 months later). Despite impaired declarative memory for the tasks, the amnesic subjects demonstrated acquisition and retention of the five skills; their learning slopes over repeated trials were comparable with those of comparison subjects. These findings indicate that preserved learning of complex perceptual–motor skills in patients with amnesia is a robust phenomenon, and that it can be demonstrated across a variety of conditions and perceptual– motor demands. The comparability of the tasks employed in this study with real-world activities highlights the potential application of this memory dissociation in the rehabilitation of patients with amnesi

A Robot Model of OC-Spectrum Disorders : Design Framework, Implementation and First Experiments

© 2019 Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyComputational psychiatry is increasingly establishing itself as valuable discipline for understanding human mental disorders. However, robot models and their potential for investigating embodied and contextual aspects of mental health have been, to date, largely unexplored. In this paper, we present an initial robot model of obsessive-compulsive (OC) spectrum disorders based on an embodied motivation-based control architecture for decision making in autonomous robots. The OC family of conditions is chiefly characterized by obsessions (recurrent, invasive thoughts) and/or compulsions (an urge to carry out certain repetitive or ritualized behaviors). The design of our robot model follows and illustrates a general design framework that we have proposed to ground research in robot models of mental disorders, and to link it with existing methodologies in psychiatry, and notably in the design of animal models. To test and validate our model, we present and discuss initial experiments, results and quantitative and qualitative analysis regarding the compulsive and obsessive elements of OC-spectrum disorders. While this initial stage of development only models basic elements of such disorders, our results already shed light on aspects of the underlying theoretical model that are not obvious simply from consideration of the model.Peer reviewe

Distributed neural system for general intelligence revealed by lesion mapping

General intelligence (g) captures the performance variance shared across cognitive tasks and correlates with real-world success. Yet it remains debated whether g reflects the combined performance of brain systems involved in these tasks or draws on specialized systems mediating their interactions. Here we investigated the neural substrates of g in 241 patients with focal brain damage using voxel-based lesion–symptom mapping. A hierarchical factor analysis across multiple cognitive tasks was used to derive a robust measure of g. Statistically significant associations were found between g and damage to a remarkably circumscribed albeit distributed network in frontal and parietal cortex, critically including white matter association tracts and frontopolar cortex. We suggest that general intelligence draws on connections between regions that integrate verbal, visuospatial, working memory, and executive processes

Prefrontal control of familiarity and recollection in working memory

Left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) is a critical neural substrate for the resolution of proactive interference (PI) in working memory. We hypothesized that left IFG achieves this by controlling the influence of familiarity- versus recollection-based information about memory probes. Consistent with this idea, we observed evidence for an early (200 msec)-peaking signal corresponding to memory probe familiarity and a late (500 msec)-resolving signal corresponding to full accrual of trial-related contextual ("recollection-based") information. Next, we applied brief trains of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) time locked to these mnemonic signals, to left IFG and to a control region. Only early rTMS of left IFG produced a modulation of the false alarm rate for high-PI probes. Additionally, the magnitude of this effect was predicted by individual differences in susceptibility to PI. These results suggest that left IFG-based control may bias the influence of familiarity- and recollection-based signals on recognition decisions

Under pressure: Response urgency modulates striatal and insula activity during decision-making under risk

When deciding whether to bet in situations that involve potential monetary loss or gain (mixed gambles), a subjective sense of pressure can influence the evaluation of the expected utility associated with each choice option. Here, we explored how gambling decisions, their psychophysiological and neural counterparts are modulated by an induced sense of urgency to respond. Urgency influenced decision times and evoked heart rate responses, interacting with the expected value of each gamble. Using functional MRI, we observed that this interaction was associated with changes in the activity of the striatum, a critical region for both reward and choice selection, and within the insula, a region implicated as the substrate of affective feelings arising from interoceptive signals which influence motivational behavior. Our findings bridge current psychophysiological and neurobiological models of value representation and action-programming, identifying the striatum and insular cortex as the key substrates of decision-making under risk and urgency

Awe and Wonder in Scientific Practice: Implications for the Relationship Between Science and Religion

This paper examines the role of awe and wonder in scientific practice. Drawing on evidence from psychological research and the writings of scientists and science communicators, I argue that awe and wonder play a crucial role in scientific discovery. They focus our attention on the natural world, encourage open-mindedness, diminish the self (particularly feelings of self-importance), help to accord value to the objects that are being studied, and provide a mode of understanding in the absence of full knowledge. I will flesh out implications of the role of awe and wonder in scientific discovery for debates on the relationship between science and religion. Abraham Heschel argued that awe and wonder are religious emotions because they reduce our feelings of self-importance, and thereby help to cultivate the proper reverent attitude towards God. Yet metaphysical naturalists such as Richard Dawkins insist that awe and wonder need not lead to any theistic commitments for scientists. The awe some scientists experience can be regarded as a form of non-theistic spirituality, which is neither a reductive naturalism nor theism. I will attempt to resolve the tension between these views by identifying some common ground

The effect of induced sadness and moderate depression on attention networks

This study investigates how sadness and minor/moderate depression influences the three functions of attention: alerting, orienting, and executive control using the attention network test. The aim of the study is to investigate whether minor to moderate depression is more similar to sadness or clinical depression with regards to attentional processing. It was predicted that both induced sadness and minor to moderate depression will influence executive control by narrowing spatial attention and in turn this will lead to less interference from the flanker items (i.e., less effects of congruency) due to a focused attentional state. No differences were predicted for alerting or orienting functions. The results from the two experiments, the first inducing sadness (Experiment 1) and the second measuring subclinical depression (Experiment 2), show that, as expected, participants who are sad or minor to moderately depressed showed less flanker interference compared to participants who were neither sad nor depressed. This study provides strong evidence, that irrespective of its aetiology, sadness and minor/moderate depression have similar effects on spatial attention

Oscillator neural network model with distributed native frequencies

We study associative memory of an oscillator neural network with distributed native frequencies. The model is based on the use of the Hebb learning rule with random patterns ($\xi_i^{\mu}=\pm 1$), and the distribution function of native frequencies is assumed to be symmetric with respect to its average. Although the system with an extensive number of stored patterns is not allowed to get entirely synchronized, long time behaviors of the macroscopic order parameters describing partial synchronization phenomena can be obtained by discarding the contribution from the desynchronized part of the system. The oscillator network is shown to work as associative memory accompanied by synchronized oscillations. A phase diagram representing properties of memory retrieval is presented in terms of the parameters characterizing the native frequency distribution. Our analytical calculations based on the self-consistent signal-to-noise analysis are shown to be in excellent agreement with numerical simulations, confirming the validity of our theoretical treatment.Comment: 9 pages, revtex, 6 postscript figures, to be published in J. Phys.