Tecnogeografias: modulações nas ecologias e políticas cognitivas / Technogeography: rearrangements in cognitive ecologies and politics

Resumo Apresentamos uma pesquisa-intervenção concebida para analisar o jogo de localização "Um dia no Jardim Botânico", projetado para ser jogado por crianças e adolescentes no Jardim Botânico de Porto Alegre. Usando o jogo como instrumento de pesquisa, investigamos as articulações e percepções que ele ofereceu aos jogadores durante a exploração do espaço híbrido Jardim-jogo. Consideramos o campo empírico da pesquisa como um espaço tecnogeográfico que se configura localmente e constitui planos de consistência para a existência de objetos e ações e suas relações que são, ao mesmo tempo, ficcionais e reais. Assim, seguimos os efeitos do jogo tomado como uma experiência programada que participa do modo como percepções e explorações ocorrem nesse espaço público; bem como as modulações nas políticas e ecologias cognitivas que daí emergem. As oficinas nos permitiram acompanhar o processo de reconfiguração da política cognitiva desse espaço e repensar o conceito de experiência programada nos jogos de localização.(AU)

Abstract This is an intervention research intended to analyze a gps-based game named "A day at the Botanical Garden", designed for children and teenagers at Porto Alegre´s Botanical Garden. By using the game as a research instrument, we meant to investigate the articulations of actions and perceptions it makes possible as players explore the hybrid garden-game space. Such empirical field is herein understood as a technogeographic space, locally arranged and able to offer patterns of consistency to the existence of objects and their relations, being simulteneaously real and fictional. We therefore consider the game as a designed experience that participates in the way perceptions and explorations emerge in a public space; as well as the cognitive ecologies and politics it might enable. By conducting a series of workshops with the game, we could track the rearrangements in players´ cognitive politics and rethink the concept of designed experienced applied to gps-based games.(AU)

On cognitive ecology and the environmental factors that promote Alzheimer disease: lessons from Octodon degus (Rodentia: Octodontidae)

Cognitive ecologist posits that the more efficiently an animal uses information from the biotic and abiotic environment, the more adaptive are its cognitive abilities. Nevertheless, this approach does not test for natural neurodegenerative processes under field or experimental conditions, which may recover animals information processing and decision making and may explain, mechanistically, maladaptive behaviors. Here, we call for integrative approaches to explain the relationship between ultimate and proximate mechanisms behind social behavior. We highlight the importance of using the endemic caviomorph rodent Octodon degus as a valuable natural model for mechanistic studies of social behavior and to explain how physical environments can shape social experiences that might influence impaired cognitive abilities and the onset and progression of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer disease. We consequently suggest neuroecological approaches to examine how key elements of the environment may affect neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with learning, memory processes and brain structures involved in social behavior. We propose the following three core objectives of a program comprising interdisciplinary research in O. degus, namely: (1) to determine whether diet types provided after weaning can lead to cognitive impairment associated with spatial memory, learning and predisposing to develop Alzheimer disease in younger ages; (2) to examine if early life social experience has long term effects on behavior and cognitive responses and risk for development Alzheimer disease in later life and (3) To determine if an increase of social interactions in adult degu reared in different degree of social stressful conditions alter their behavior and cognitive responses.