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End GDP mania
“End GDP mania: how the world should really measure prosperity” Last week’s United Nations General Assembly, held in New York City, generated no shortage of headlines. But one notable policy initiative from the world body was not discussed by world leaders when it should have been. UN secretary-general António Guterres has put together a high-level…
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Fast, slow, & metacognitive
“Fast, slow, and metacognitive thinking in AI” Inspired by the ”thinking fast and slow” cognitive theory of human decision making, we propose a multi-agent cognitive architecture (SOFAI) that is based on ”fast”/”slow” solvers and a metacognitive module. We then present experimental results on the behavior of an instance of this architecture for AI systems that…
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From Soundwaves to Brainwaves: “Music”
“From Soundwaves to Brainwaves: The Transformative Power of Music” The human brain physically embodies rhythmic sound in a remarkablesymphony that has the power to heal. People resonate to music. They respond positively in ways that suggest that the rhythms of the brain and body, like neurons, breathing, or cardiac rhythms, are engaged when you listen…
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Critical Thinking for Medicine—Moving Beyond Illness Scripts
“Critical Thinking for 21st-CenturyMedicine—Moving Beyond Illness Scripts” Clinical Reasoning for 21st-Century Medicine: Optimal clinical reasoning will involve an appropriate balance betweenillness scripts and pathophysiological reasoning. In our view, medical education has historically overemphasized the former—to which learners are predisposed even without explicit teaching— and underemphasized the latter. The risks of this historical approach will become…
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Computational Framework for cognitive biology
“Toward a computational framework for cognitive biology: Unifying approaches from cognitive neuroscience and comparative cognition” Progress in understanding cognition requires a quantitative, theoretical framework, grounded in the other natural sciences and able to bridge between implementational, algorithmic and computational levels of explanation. This review article reviews recent results in neuroscience and cognitive biology that, when combined, provide key components…
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Brain-body physiology
“Brain-body physiology: Local, reflex, and central communication” Behavior is tightly synchronized with bodily physiology. Internal needs from the body drive behavior selection, while optimal behavior performance requires a coordinated physiological response. Internal state is dynamically represented by the nervous system to influence mood and emotion, and body-brain signals also direct responses to external sensory cues,…
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Divergent Perception: Framing Creative Cognition
“Divergent Perception: Framing Creative Cognition Through the Lens of Sensory Flexibility” “Savoir regarder est un moyen d’inventer.” Salvador Dali. Creativity is a cornerstone of human evolution and is typically defined as the multifaceted ability to produce novel and useful artifacts. Although much research has focused on divergent thinking, growing evidence underscores the importance of perceptual…
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Towards embodied intelligence
“Intelligent soft matter: towards embodied intelligence” Intelligent soft matter lies at the intersection of materials science, physics, and cognitive science, promising to change how we design and interact with materials. This transformative field aims to create materials with life-like capabilities, such as perception, learning, memory, and adaptive behavior. Unlike traditional materials, which typically perform static…
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Known and Unknown Biases
“Known and Unknown Biases: A Framework for Contextualising and Identifying Bias in Animal Behaviour Research“ (This article discusses the bias in animal behaviour research, but – as known to most readers, I hope – humanes too are members of the animal kingdom 🙂 Biases in animal behaviour research are inevitable consequences of our societal and…
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A Model of Creative Thinking
“Adaptive Decision-Making “Fast” and “Slow”: A Model of Creative Thinking” The late Daniel Kahneman introduced the concept of fast and slow thinking, representing two distinct cognitive systems involved in decision-making (DM). Fast thinking (System 1) operates intuitively and spontaneously. In contrast, slow thinking (System 2) is characterized by deliberation and analytical reasoning. Following Kahneman’s view, called the…
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Climate Change, A Geoscience Perspective
Climate Change, A Geoscience Perspective This open access book on climate change assesses past climatic change from a geoscience perspective and directly and effectively addresses common misconceptions on climate and climate change. A geoscience perspective on the multiple causes, rates, and consequences of climate change is essential context to assess modern climate change and our…
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The Idealized Mind
The Idealized Mind: From Model-Based Science to Cognitive Science.The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding and support from MIT Press Direct to Open A defense of scientific realism based on the role of idealization in the cognitive sciences. We study nature, including the mind and brain, by building scientific models.…
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Pathfinding: a neurodynamical account of intuition
Pathfinding: a neurodynamical account of intuition We examine the neurobiology of intuition, a term often inconsistently defined in scientific literature. While researchers generally agree that intuition represents “an experienced-based process resulting in a spontaneous tendency toward a hunch or hypothesis,” we establish a firmer neurobiological foundation by framing intuition evolutionarily as a pathfinding mechanism emerging…
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Horizon Scanning
EU policy lab released a set of “signal cards“. More information available at “In the mood for the future with Horizon Scanning Cards“ The Signal Cards come out of the ESPAS Horizon Scanning activity, in which we present and analyse emerging trends, technologies or generally signs of new which we identified through the horizon scanning…
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Plasticity: A network theory
“Plasticity in mental health: A network theory“ Plasticity is the ability to modify brain and behavior, ultimately promoting an amplification of the impact of the context on the individual’s mental health. Thus, plasticity is not beneficial per se but its value depends on contextual factors, such as the quality of the living environment. High plasticity is…
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Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience
“Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures“ As scientists, we want solid answers, but we also want to answer questions that matter. Yet, the brain’s complexity forces trade-offs between these desiderata, bringing about two distinct research approaches in neuroscience that we describe as ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’. Bottom-up neuroscience The bottom-up research culture…
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Responsible Modeling
Responsible modelling and the ethics of mathematics for decision support Mathematical models are used to inform decisions across many sectors including climate change, finance, and epidemics. But models are not perfect representations of the real world – they are partial, uncertain and often biased. What, then, does responsible modelling look like? And how can we…
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Therapy That Isn’t Psychotherapy
I found this nice discours on an interesting topic, related with individual challlenges, AI and related tools appearing in this relation. Therapy That Isn’t Psychotherapy by Steven Reidbord Reducing the problem to a merely external one leads to therapy that resembles political advocacy; therapy that prizes agreement (“validation”) over all else; therapy that absolves the patient…
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