109 research outputs found
Ghost hand: My hand is not mine
Synchronous visuo-tactile stimulation of the type in the rubber hand illusion (RHI)^1-3^ and in out of body experience (OBE)^4,5^ can induce the brain to incorporate external objects or images into a part or whole of body image. Whether in the context of RHI or OBE, since the participant passively receives visuo-tactile stimulations, body image appears only with the sense of ownership (SoO), not with the sense of agency (the registration that we are the initiators of our actions; SoA)^6,7^. Insofar as self-consciousness as a body image is a unity acting in its environments, body image has to be investigated in the relationship between SoO and SoA^8,9^. It requires an experimental condition in which SoO and SoA can be independently separated in an active condition. However, no experimental condition that is opposite to RHI and OBE in which a subject can feel SoA but not SoO has been proposed to date^10^. Here, we show that a person loses SoO for his own hand that he can freely move by his own will when he sees himself in a lateral view through a head mounted display. It was previously thought that SoO can be represented by synchronous inter-modal stimulations^10^, and that SoO appears to be complemented by SoA11. Our findings show that SoO can be lost under a synchronous visuo-proprioceptive condition while SoA can be maintained. SoO and SoA are two aspects of body representation, and similar dissociations have been proposed in various contexts, such as body image and body schema^12,13^, and 'Acting I' and 'Mine'^14^. Our result suggests that the two-centric-self consisting of SoA and SoO can enhance dynamically robust self-consciousness
Robot control with biological cells
At present there exists a large gap in size, performance, adaptability and robustness between natural and artificial information processors for performing coherent perception-action tasks under real-time constraints. Even the simplest organisms have an enviable capability of coping with an unknown dynamic environment. Robots, in contrast, are still clumsy if confronted with such complexity. This paper presents a bio-hybrid architecture developed for exploring an alternate approach to the control of autonomous robots. Circuits prepared from amoeboid plasmodia of the slime mold Physarum polycephalum are interfaced with an omnidirectional hexapod robot. Sensory signals from the macro-physical environment of the robot are transduced to cellular scale and processed using the unique micro-physical features of intracellular information processing. Conversely, the response form the cellular computation is amplified to yield a macroscopic output action in the environment mediated through the robot’s actuators
Computing Substrates and Life
Alive matter distinguishes itself from inanimate matter by actively maintaining a high degree of inhomogenous organisation. Information processing is quintessential to this capability. The present paper inquires into the degree to which the information processing aspect of living systems can be abstracted from the physical medium of its implementation. Information processing serving to sustain the complex organisation of a living system faces both the harsh reality of real-time requirements and severe constraints on energy and material that can be expended on the task. This issue is of interest for the potential scope of Artificial Life and its interaction with Synthetic Biology. It is pertinent also for information technology. With regard to the latter aspect, the use of a living cell in a robot control architecture is considered
Quantum Cognition based on an Ambiguous Representation Derived from a Rough Set Approximation
Over the last years, in a series papers by Arrechi and others, a model for
the cognitive processes involved in decision making has been proposed and
investigated. The key element of this model is the expression of apprehension
and judgement, basic cognitive process of decision making, as an inverse Bayes
inference classifying the information content of neuron spike trains. For
successive plural stimuli, it has been shown that this inference, equipped with
basic non-algorithmic jumps, is affected by quantum-like characteristics. We
show here that such a decision making process is related consistently with
ambiguous representation by an observer within a universe of discourse. In our
work ambiguous representation of an object or a stimuli is defined by a pair of
maps from objects of a set to their representations, where these two maps are
interrelated in a particular structure. The a priori and a posteriori
hypotheses in Bayes inference are replaced by the upper and lower
approximation, correspondingly, for the initial data sets each derived with
respect to a map. We show further that due to the particular structural
relation between the two maps, the logical structure of such combined
approximations can only be expressed as an orthomodular lattice and therefore
can be represented by a quantum rather than a Boolean logic. To our knowledge,
this is the first investigation aiming to reveal the concrete logic structure
of inverse Bayes inference in cognitive processes.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, original research pape
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