From human to artificial cognition and back: New perspectives on cognitively inspired AI systems

We overview the main historical and technological elements characterising the rise, the fall and the recent renaissance of the cognitive approaches to Artificial Intelligence and provide some insights and suggestions about the future directions and challenges that, in our opinion, this discipline needs to face in the next years

Integrating a Cognitive Framework for Knowledge Representation and Categorization in Diverse Cognitive Architectures

AbstractThis paper describes the rationale followed for the integration of Dual-PECCS, a cognitively-inspired knowledge representation and reasoning system, into two rather different cognitive architectures, such as ACT-R and CLARION. The provided integration shows how the repre-sentational and reasoning mechanisms implemented by our framework may be plausibly applied to computational models of cognition based on different assumptions

Immunoglobulins in Human Seminal Plasma

Single radial immunodiffusion has been used to evaluate immunoglobulins and secretory piece (SP) in human seminal plasma. Samples were collected from 90 healthy volunteers, 202 subjects submitted to vasectomy for contraceptive purposes, tested at various intervals after surgery, and 725 patients grouped according to selected andrological disorders. Results may be summarized as follows. In normal subjects IgG and IgA were constantly present (mean values +/- SD: 8.14 +/- 2.82 mg/dl; 1.91 +/- 1.03 mg/dl, respectively) while IgM were detected in trace amounts (from 0.7 to 3.3 mg/dl) in 10% of subjects, and negligible or absent in the remaining subjects. In vasectomized subjects IgG and IgA showed a significant increase only in the first 3 months after vasectomy, probably due to surgery. In andrological patients Ig showed an increase in cases with antisperm antibodies (A b) and in those with infections of genital tract and positive semen culture. On the basis of these findings and the secretory piece assay data the importance appears to be stressed of the local immunocompetent system at least in some andrological diseases

Structural variants of chromosome 9: a possibile association with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism

We report two cases of structural variations of chromosome 9 associated with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism and azoospermia in adolescent boys. One patient also had a partially imperforated urethral meatus. Histological examination revealed that both had hypotrophic and underdeveloped testes. There was no LH and FSH response to LH-RH stimulation nor was there any response to naloxone tests. Basal and HCG stimulated plasma testosterone values were below normal prepubertal levels. As the administration of gonadotrophins did not improve the clinical and hormonal findings, alternative androgen therapy was necessary to achieve secondary sexual characteristics. Although they reached a good level of androgenization, their testes were still very small and azoospermia remained, as confirmed by repeated semen analyses. A possible association between chromosome 9 polymorphisms and hypothalamo-pituitary axis abnormalities is suggested. It is hypothesized that structural variants of chromosome 9 are not unrelated occurrences. Furthermore, and in view of the fact that they can lead to a high risk of azoospermia and infertility, such variants call for clinical investigatio