Category: Neurobiology/psychology

• Will it ever happen?

  Evolution of Brains and Computers: The Roads Not Taken – Can machines ever achieve true intelligence? , is a perspective article in entropy by Ricard Solé and Luís F. Seoane, has a great discussion on intelligence. When computers started to become a dominant part of technology around the 1950s, fundamental questions about reliable designs and…

  walterstiers

  2022-05-17

  #Wicked, Active Inference, AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty, #Wicked

• Metacognition accompanying decision-making

  Decision-making is usually accompanied by metacognition, through which a decision maker monitors uncertainty regarding a decision and may then consequently revise the decision. These metacognitive processes can occur prior to or in the absence of feedback. The neural mechanisms of metacognition remain controversial. A novel “decision–redecision” paradigm to investigate the neural metacognitive processes involved in…

  walterstiers

  2022-05-17

  #Wicked, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Design Thinking, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• Modeling the Predictive Social Mind

  The social mind is tailored to the problem of predicting the mental states and actions of other people. However, social cognition researchers have only scratched the surface of the predictive social mind. We discuss here a new framework for explaining how people organize social knowledge and use it for social prediction. Specifically, we propose a…

  walterstiers

  2022-05-17

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Social-Technical

  #TheInformationLens

• Enriched Environment helps decision

  Inter-Individual Differences in Cognitive Tasks: Focusing on the Shaping of Decision-Making Strategies is a recent publication about the Mouse Gambling Task. It revealed about 30% of healthy mice displaying risk-averse choices while about 20-25% of mice make risk-prone choices. These strategies are accompanied by different brain network mobilization and individual levels of regional -prefrontal and…

  walterstiers

  2022-05-17

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence

• Active Inference – The book

  Available, – Open Access – free to download – great reading … Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior  By Thomas Parr, Giovanni Pezzulo, Karl J. Friston The first comprehensive treatment of active inference, an integrative perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior used across multiple disciplines. Active inference is a way of understanding…

  walterstiers

  2022-03-30

  Biology of Information, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds

  This post is a pointer to a great article from Michael Levin, just published in Frontiers in Systems Neurosciences All known cognitive agents are collective intelligences, because we are all made of parts; biological agents in particular are not just structurally modular, but made of parts that are themselves agents in important ways. There is…

  walterstiers

  2022-03-30

  #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• French Horn taught me everything I needed to Know – Arthur Brooks

  ‘From Strength to Strength:’ Follow this link, fill out the CAPTCHA and … Arthur Brooks discusses his new book. He discusses about a nice set of ideas on building a happy and interesting life. His book, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life  is a practical…

  walterstiers

  2022-03-24

  #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #Wicked

• Beware of the lens you apply on gender

  Inspired by Deric’s MindBlog entry of today, I like to make a reference to a avorite quote (also on my home-page): If the map doesn’t agree with the ground the map is wrong” Gordon LivingstonToo Soon Old, Too Late Smart The manly art of self-promotion – or maybe the female alternative, is building a map and…

  walterstiers

  2022-03-11

  #Wicked, Complexity, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Why Can the Brain (And Not a Computer) Make Sense of the Liar Paradox?

  Ordinary computing machines prohibit self-reference because it leads to logical inconsistencies and undecidability. In contrast, the human mind can understand self-referential statements without necessitating physically impossible brain states. Why can the brain make sense of self-reference? This paper addresses this question by defining the Strange Loop Model, which features causal feedback between two brain modules,…

  walterstiers

  2022-02-09

  AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Education shapes the structure of semantic memory and impacts creative thinking

  Quotes from some a recent article, presenting intersting insights on semantic memory and creative thinking. “Education is central to the acquisition of knowledge, such as when children learn new concepts. It is unknown, however, whether educational differences impact not only what concepts children learn, but how those concepts come to be represented in semantic memory—a…

  walterstiers

  2022-02-06

  Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Design Thinking, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind

•  “Nocebo” calls for vaccination side effects.

  Most of the side effects that people experience after a COVID-19 vaccination can be blamed on the ‘nocebo’ effect. The nocebo effect is like the evil twin of the placebo effect — for example, it heightens pain if a person anticipates that something will hurt. Researchers reviewed 12 randomized clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines and…

  walterstiers

  2022-01-19

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• “active learning conditions” stimulate common processes that become part of the representations

  There is an emerging consensus on the virtues of active learning methods for improving student performance. Such learning methods can be any instruction or technique that requires students to actively engage in the learning process, as compared to more traditional, passive ways of learning.One form of active learning is retrieval practice (RP), where the activity…

  walterstiers

  2022-01-06

  Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Binary “Space-Time decisions” accumulate

  There was this great article in PNAS, recently: The geometry of decision-making in individuals and collectives. Luis M. Rocha posted a perfect summary on twitter: In biology, complex dynamics so often lead to binary (thresholded/critical) decision: “we predict that the brain repeatedly breaks multichoice decisions into a series of binary decisions in space–time”.

  walterstiers

  2021-12-15

  Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind

• Individual differences in information-seeking

  Vast amounts of personalized information are now available to individuals. A vital research challenge is to establish how people decide what information they wish to obtain.  People’s decisions about whether to seek or avoid information are related to an integration of the – instrumental value, – hedonic value and – cognitive value of information. Individual…

  walterstiers

  2021-12-03

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence

• The Power Of Us – Group Decisions @ “Behavior Change For Good”

  Jay Van Bavel, and Dominic Packer have written a new book titled, The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony. It examines how group affiliations influence behavior and inspire both personal and social change. During the BEHAVIOR CHANGE FOR GOOD INITIATIVE interview, Van Bavel talks about why he and…

  walterstiers

  2021-11-24

  Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• World Model – “Free Energy” Selections of Perception & Policy

  During their lives humans constantly interact with the physical environment, as well as with themselves and others.World model learning and inference are crucial concepts in brain and cognitive science, as well as in AI and robotics. The outstanding challenges of building a generalpurpose AI needs world modelling and probabilistic inference, needed to realise a brain-like…

  walterstiers

  2021-10-29

  AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Uncategorized

  #DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Learning: Brain vs xNN

  The neural and cognitive architecture for learning from a small sample is a nice article I would like to recommend. It highlights how human learners avoid generalization issues found in machine learning, proposes a general model explaining how the brain may simplify complex problems. Synergy between cognitive functions and reinforcement learning allows simplification.Recurrent loops between…

  walterstiers

  2021-10-14

  AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology

• Can we get human nature right?

  For years, I have the pleasure to follow the great blog site of Deric Brownd. I would like to share with you this post on the recent perspective on ‘Can we get human nature right?‘. Iris Berent does an interesting Perspective artice in PNAS that considers the strong intuitions that laypeople hold about human nature. People’s attitudes…

  walterstiers

  2021-10-01

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

• Does the quality of “Smart Information Processing” connect with the Default Mode Network ?

  I was triggered by an article in Nature, explaining the atypical connectome hierarchy in ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). ASD is characterized by atypical sensory processing, while and deficits in high-level cognitive and social functions, including impairments in Theory of Mind and predictive abilities. The article points out that ASD might emerge from disturbances in macroscale cortical…

  walterstiers

  2021-08-22

  AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Walking

• Friston: The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI, WIRED says.

  Karl Friston’s free energy principle might be the most all-encompassing idea since Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. But to understand it, you need to peer inside the mind of Friston himself. Wired has a great article on this idea and researcher.Some inspiring exerpts and quotes: He realized that [it] had no larger purpose, at…

  walterstiers

  2021-07-05

  Active Inference, AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #ActiveInference, #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind

• Coarse-graining as a downward causation mechanism

  Apparent downward causation does not demand that estimates of aggregate properties be correct or even good predictors of the system’s future state or successful strategies (although that would be useful). Furthermore, components do not need to agree in their estimates of the variables. Apparent downward causation becomes effective downward causation—the strong form—when: As an interaction or environmental…

  walterstiers

  2021-06-25

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology

  #downcausation, #emergence