Category: Complexity
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Interoception and Active Inference for mental health
Interoception refers to the process by which the nervous system senses and integrates signals originating from within the body, providing a momentary mapping of the body’s internal landscape and its relationship to the outside world. Active inference is based on the premise that afferent sensory input to the brain is constantly shaped and modified by…
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Human society is currently undergoing a socio-cultural ETI
An evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI) occurs when a previously independent organism becomes a lower level unit within a higher hierarchical level (for example, cells in an organism, ants in a colony). Based on archaeological and historical accounts from the last 12000 years, this article “Human societal development: is it an evolutionary transition in individuality?”…
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The Future of Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell
AI is all around us recognizing our faces in photos, transcribing our speech, constructing our news feeds, navigating our driving routes, answering our search queries, and much more. But rapidly improving AI is poised to play a much bigger role in all of our lives. In this lecture, AI expert Melanie Mitchell demystifies how current-day…
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How adults understand what young children say
When babies first begin to talk, their vocabulary is very limited. Often one of the first sounds they generate is “da,” which may refer to dad, a dog, a dot, or nothing at all. How does an adult listener make sense of this limited verbal repertoire? A new study “How adults understand what young children…
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The computational power of the human brain
Peter J. Gebicke-Haerter published a great review article with this title. I selected some snippets and the key conclusion: At the end of the 20th century, analog systems in computer science have been widely replaced by digital systems due to their higher computing power. Nevertheless, the question keeps being intriguing until now: is the brain…
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Harris Hawks Optimization
The Harris hawk optimizer is a recent population-based metaheuristics algorithm that simulates the hunting behavior of hawks. This swarm-based optimizer performs the optimization procedure using a novel way of exploration and exploitation and the multiphases of search. A review research focuses on the applications and developments of the recent well-established robust optimizer Harris hawk optimizer…
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Wicked7 – looking for “Regenerative” solution
12 jul 2022, TedX@Athens. Christian Sarkar makes bold statements: Globalization has failed. Income inequality has exploded. COVID hasn’t disappeared yet. And War is at the gate. What can be done in your neighborhood, in your city? We learn the lessons of regeneration from Palermo, Sicily – and the (website and) book by Christian Sarkar, Philip…
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A top-down, bottom-up model of circuit function for anxiety and depression.
A great review article describes the bottom-up and top-down processing from Marr’s computational-algorithmic-implementation perspective to understand depressive and anxious disease states. The review illustrate examples of bottom-up processing as basolateral amygdala signaling and projections and top-down processing as medial prefrontal cortex internal signaling and projections. Understanding these internal processing dynamics can help us better model…
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AI can distort human beliefs
Without a zone of uncertainty plus other troubling features, generative AI is poised to amplify bias and falsehoods, distort human perception. Individual humans form their beliefs by sampling a small subset of the available data in the world. Once those beliefs are formed with high certainty, they can become stubborn to revise. Fabrication and bias…
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Social and Affective Neuroscience of Everyday Human Interaction
I found – rather serendipitous – this recent, open access and very interesting book “Social and Affective Neuroscience of Everyday Human Interaction“, edited by Springer 2023. This Open Access book presents the current state of the art knowledge on social and affective neuroscience based on empirical findings. Some highlights as appetiser: Molecular Imaging of the…
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Symmetry–simplicity–complexity
A number of (the 15) contributions to a theme issue ‘Making and breaking symmetries in mind and life’ have some interest to be referred. Symmetry is a motif featuring in almost all areas of science. Symmetries appear throughout the natural world, making them particularly important in our quest to understand the structure of the world…
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Bayesian Nonlinear Models
The review article Bayesian Nonlinear Models for Repeated Measurement Data gives a valuation of the use for the Bayesian Model to solve complex problems. Nonlinear mixed effects models have become a standard platform for analysis when data is in the form of continuous and repeated measurements of subjects from a population of interest, while temporal…
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The innovation and intelligence of goats …
Goats have not (yet) earned a reputation for their problem-solving abilities. But if you hide food in a strange cup and put a lid on it, a goat may find a way, a new study finds. And not just any goat. Animals that functioned like outsiders in their social group were best at tackling and…
