Enhancing Robotic Perception through Synchronized Simulation and Physical Common-Sense Reasoning.

We introduce both conceptual and empirical findings arising from the amalgamation of a robotics cognitive architecture with an embedded physics simulator, aligning with the principles outlined in the intuitive physics literature. The employed robotic cognitive architecture, named CORTEX, leverages a highly efficient distributed working memory known as deep state representation. This working memory inherently encompasses a fundamental ontology, state persistency, geometric and logical relationships among elements, and tools for reading, updating, and reasoning about its contents. Our primary objective is to investigate the hypothesis that the integration of a physics simulator into the architecture streamlines the implementation of various functionalities that would otherwise necessitate extensive coding and debugging efforts. Furthermore, we categorize these enhanced functionalities into broad types based on the nature of the problems they address. These include addressing challenges related to occlusion, model-based perception, self-calibration, scene structural stability, and human activity interpretation. To demonstrate the outcomes of our experiments, we employ CoppeliaSim as the embedded simulator and both a Kinova Gen3 robotic arm and the Open-Manipulator-P as the real-world scenarios. Synchronization is maintained between the simulator and the stream of real events. Depending on the ongoing task, numerous queries are computed, and the results are projected into the working memory. Participating agents can then leverage this information to enhance overall performance.

The "Small World of Words" free association norms for Rioplatense Spanish.

Large-scale word association datasets are both important tools used in psycholinguistics and used as models that capture meaning when considered as semantic networks. Here, we present word association norms for Rioplatense Spanish, a variant spoken in Argentina and Uruguay. The norms were derived through a large-scale crowd-sourced continued word association task in which participants give three associations to a list of cue words. Covering over 13,000 words and +3.6 M responses, it is currently the most extensive dataset available for Spanish. We compare the obtained dataset with previous studies in Dutch and English to investigate the role of grammatical gender and studies that used Iberian Spanish to test generalizability to other Spanish variants. Finally, we evaluated the validity of our data in word processing (lexical decision reaction times) and semantic (similarity judgment) tasks. Our results demonstrate that network measures such as in-degree provide a good prediction of lexical decision response times. Analyzing semantic similarity judgments showed that results replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating that semantic similarity derived using spreading activation or spectral methods outperform word embeddings trained on text corpora.

Multiplicative processing in the modeling of cognitive activities in large neural networks.

Explaining the foundation of cognitive abilities in the processing of information by neural systems has been in the beginnings of biophysics since McCulloch and Pitts pioneered work within the biophysics school of Chicago in the 1940s and the interdisciplinary cybernetists meetings in the 1950s, inseparable from the birth of computing and artificial intelligence. Since then, neural network models have traveled a long path, both in the biophysical and the computational disciplines. The biological, neurocomputational aspect reached its representational maturity with the Distributed Associative Memory models developed in the early 70 s. In this framework, the inclusion of signal-signal multiplication within neural network models was presented as a necessity to provide matrix associative memories with adaptive, context-sensitive associations, while greatly enhancing their computational capabilities. In this review, we show that several of the most successful neural network models use a form of multiplication of signals. We present several classical models that included such kind of multiplication and the computational reasons for the inclusion. We then turn to the different proposals about the possible biophysical implementation that underlies these computational capacities. We pinpoint the important ideas put forth by different theoretical models using a tensor product representation and show that these models endow memories with the context-dependent adaptive capabilities necessary to allow for evolutionary adaptation to changing and unpredictable environments. Finally, we show how the powerful abilities of contemporary computationally deep-learning models, inspired in neural networks, also depend on multiplications, and discuss some perspectives in view of the wide panorama unfolded. The computational relevance of multiplications calls for the development of new avenues of research that uncover the mechanisms our nervous system uses to achieve multiplication.

Mind the orthography: Revisiting the contribution of prereading phonological awareness to reading acquisition.

Reading acquisition is based on a set of preliteracy skills that lay the foundation for future reading abilities. Phonological awareness-the ability to identify and manipulate the sound units of oral language-has been reported to play a central role in reading acquisition. However, current evidence is mixed with respect to its universal contribution to reading acquisition across orthographies. This longitudinal study examines the development and contribution of phonological awareness to early reading skills in Spanish, a transparent orthography. The results of a comprehensive battery of phonological awareness skills in a large sample of children (Time 1 n = 616, 296 females, mean age 5.6, from middle to high socioeconomic backgrounds; Time 2 n = 397) with no reading experience at study onset suggest that the development of phonological awareness is delayed in Spanish. Furthermore, our results show that phonological awareness does not contribute to the prediction of reading acquisition above and beyond other preliteracy skills. Letter knowledge indexes children's ability to identify phonemes and thus takes a more central role in the prediction of early reading skills. Therefore, we underscore the need to thoughtfully address the distinctive features of the reading acquisition process across orthographies, which should be taken into account in models of reading and learning to read. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Teaching the Science in Neuroscience to Protect From Neuromyths: From Courses to Fieldwork.

In recent decades, Cognitive Neuroscience has evolved from a rather arcane field trying to understand how the brain supports mental activities, to one that contributes to public policies. In this article, we focus on the contributions from Cognitive Neuroscience to Education. This line of research has produced a great deal of information that can potentially help in the transformation of Education, promoting interventions that help in several domains including literacy and math learning, social skills and science. The growth of the Neurosciences has also created a public demand for knowledge and a market for neuro-products to fulfill these demands, through books, booklets, courses, apps and websites. These products are not always based on scientific findings and coupled to the complexities of the scientific theories and evidence, have led to the propagation of misconceptions and the perpetuation of neuromyths. This is particularly harmful for educators because these misconceptions might make them abandon useful practices in favor of others not sustained by evidence. In order to bridge the gap between Education and Neuroscience, we have been conducting, since 2013, a set of activities that put educators and scientists to work together in research projects. The participation goes from discussing the research results of our projects to being part and deciding aspects of the field interventions. Another strategy consists of a course centered around the applications of Neuroscience to Education and their empirical and theoretical bases. These two strategies have to be compared to popularization efforts that just present Neuroscientific results. We show that the more the educators are involved in the discussion of the methodological bases of Neuroscientific knowledge, be it in the course or as part of a stay, the better they manage the underlying concepts. We argue that this is due to the understanding of scientific principles, which leads to a more profound comprehension of what the evidence can and cannot support, thus shielding teachers from the false allure of some commercial neuro-products. We discuss the three approaches and present our efforts to determine whether they lead to a strong understanding of the conceptual and empirical base of Neuroscience.

EEG signatures of elementary composition: Disentangling genuine composition and expectancy processes.

We adapted Bemis & Pylkkänen's (2011) paradigm to study elementary composition in Spanish using electroencephalography, to determine if EEG is sensitive enough to detect a composition-related activity and analyze whether the expectancy of participants to compose contributes to this signal. We found relevant activity at the expected channels and times, and a putative composition-related activity before the second word onset. Using threshold-free cluster permutation analysis and linear models we show a task-progression effect for the composition task that is not present for the list task. In a second experiment we evaluate two-word composition incorporating all conditions in a single task. In this case, we failed to find any significant composition-related activity suggesting that the activity measured with EEG may be in part carried by expectancy processes arising from the block design of the experiment, which can be prevented by using a non-blocked design and data-driven techniques to analyze the data.

Relative meaning frequencies for 578 homonyms in two Spanish dialects: A cross-linguistic extension of the English eDom norms.

Relative meaning frequency is a critical factor to consider in studies of semantic ambiguity. In this work, we examined how this measure may change across the European and Rioplatense dialects of Spanish, as well as how the overall distributional properties differ between Spanish and English, using a computer-assisted norming approach based on dictionary definitions (Armstrong, Tokowicz, & Plaut, 2012). The results showed that the two dialects differ considerably in terms of the relative meaning frequencies of their constituent homonyms, and that the overall distributions of relative frequencies vary considerably across languages, as well. These results highlight the need for localized norms to design powerful studies of semantic ambiguity and suggest that dialectal differences may be responsible for some discrepant effects related to homonymy. In quantifying the reliability of the norms, we also established that as few as seven ratings are needed to converge on a highly stable set of ratings. This approach is therefore a very practical means of acquiring essential data in studies of semantic ambiguity, relative to past approaches, such as those based on the classification of free associates. The norms also present new possibilities for studying semantic ambiguity effects within and between populations who speak one or more languages. The norms and associated software are available for download at http://edom.cnbc.cmu.edu/ or http://www.bcbl.eu/databases/edom/ .

A modular approach to language production: models and facts.

Numerous cortical disorders affect language. We explore the connection between the observed language behavior and the underlying substrates by adopting a neurocomputational approach. To represent the observed trajectories of the discourse in patients with disorganized speech and in healthy participants, we design a graphical representation for the discourse as a trajectory that allows us to visualize and measure the degree of order in the discourse as a function of the disorder of the trajectories. Our work assumes that many of the properties of language production and comprehension can be understood in terms of the dynamics of modular networks of neural associative memories. Based upon this assumption, we connect three theoretical and empirical domains: (1) neural models of language processing and production, (2) statistical methods used in the construction of functional brain images, and (3) corpus linguistic tools, such as Latent Semantic Analysis (henceforth LSA), that are used to discover the topic organization of language. We show how the neurocomputational models intertwine with LSA and the mathematical basis of functional neuroimaging. Within this framework we describe the properties of a context-dependent neural model, based on matrix associative memories, that performs goal-oriented linguistic behavior. We link these matrix associative memory models with the mathematics that underlie functional neuroimaging techniques and present the "functional brain images" emerging from the model. This provides us with a completely "transparent box" with which to analyze the implication of some statistical images. Finally, we use these models to explore the possibility that functional synaptic disconnection can lead to an increase in connectivity between the representations of concepts that could explain some of the alterations in discourse displayed by patients with schizophrenia.

Detecting order-disorder transitions in discourse: implications for schizophrenia.

Several psychiatric and neurological conditions affect the semantic organization and content of a patient's speech. Specifically, the discourse of patients with schizophrenia is frequently characterized as lacking coherence. The evaluation of disturbances in discourse is often used in diagnosis and in assessing treatment efficacy, and is an important factor in prognosis. Measuring these deviations, such as "loss of meaning" and incoherence, is difficult and requires substantial human effort. Computational procedures can be employed to characterize the nature of the anomalies in discourse. We present a set of new tools derived from network theory and information science that may assist in empirical and clinical studies of communication patterns in patients, and provide the foundation for future automatic procedures. First we review information science and complex network approaches to measuring semantic coherence, and then we introduce a representation of discourse that allows for the computation of measures of disorganization. Finally we apply these tools to speech transcriptions from patients and a healthy participant, illustrating the implications and potential of this novel framework.

Dynamic searching in the brain.

Cognitive functions rely on the extensive use of information stored in the brain, and the searching for the relevant information for solving some problem is a very complex task. Human cognition largely uses biological search engines, and we assume that to study cognitive function we need to understand the way these brain search engines work. The approach we favor is to study multi-modular network models, able to solve particular problems that involve searching for information. The building blocks of these multimodular networks are the context dependent memory models we have been using for almost 20 years. These models work by associating an output to the Kronecker product of an input and a context. Input, context and output are vectors that represent cognitive variables. Our models constitute a natural extension of the traditional linear associator. We show that coding the information in vectors that are processed through association matrices, allows for a direct contact between these memory models and some procedures that are now classical in the Information Retrieval field. One essential feature of context-dependent models is that they are based on the thematic packing of information, whereby each context points to a particular set of related concepts. The thematic packing can be extended to multimodular networks involving input-output contexts, in order to accomplish more complex tasks. Contexts act as passwords that elicit the appropriate memory to deal with a query. We also show toy versions of several 'neuromimetic' devices that solve cognitive tasks as diverse as decision making or word sense disambiguation. The functioning of these multimodular networks can be described as dynamical systems at the level of cognitive variables.

Looking for robust properties in the growth of an academic network: the case of the Uruguayan biological research community.

Graph-theoretical methods have recently been used to analyze certain properties of natural and social networks. In this work, we have investigated the early stages in the growth of a Uruguayan academic network, the Biology Area of the Programme for the Development of Basic Science (PEDECIBA). This transparent social network is a territory for the exploration of the reliability of clustering methods that can potentially be used when we are confronted with opaque natural systems that provide us with a limited spectrum of observables (happens in research on the relations between brain, thought and language). From our social net, we constructed two different graph representations based on the relationships among researchers revealed by their co-participation in Master's thesis committees. We studied these networks at different times and found that they achieve connectedness early in their evolution and exhibit the small-world property (i.e. high clustering with short path lengths). The data seem compatible with power law distributions of connectivity, clustering coefficients and betweenness centrality. Evidence of preferential attachment of new nodes and of new links between old nodes was also found in both representations. These results suggest that there are topological properties observed throughout the growth of the network that do not depend on the representations we have chosen but reflect intrinsic properties of the academic collective under study. Researchers in PEDECIBA are classified according to their specialties. We analysed the community structure detected by a standard algorithm in both representations. We found that much of the pre-specified structure is recovered and part of the mismatches can be attributed to convergent interests between scientists from different sub-disciplines. This result shows the potentiality of some clustering methods for the analysis of partially known natural systems.

Schizophrenic speech as a disordered trajectory in a collapsed cognitive "Small-World".

New theoretical instruments, as goal-directed neural networks models and geometric representations based on semantic graphs, open new approaches for our understanding of the schizophrenic speech. The neuropathologic disorders of the schizophrenia can be simulated using neural models, and these models can eventually explain the origin of goal confusion and incoherence in the schizophrenic discourse trajectory. Moreover, these models are useful to evaluate the different hypothesis about the pathogenic mechanisms of the disease. At the same time, a geometric representation of the trajectory of the speech can be obtained from real data. Our conjecture is that a context-dependent graph can be constructed in order to explore if, when the disease became more severe, a transition from a quasi ordered graph to a nearly completely random graph occurs. Plausibly, there exists a wide region where the graph has the properties of a "small-world". This kind of analyses could be potentially carried out using data coming from the spontaneous speech of schizophrenic patients, and can help to evaluate the progress of the disease. At the same time, these geometrical representations could help to evaluate the effect of treatments.

Elman topology with sigma-pi units: an application to the modeling of verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia.

The development of neural network models has greatly enhanced the comprehension of cognitive phenomena. Here, we show that models using multiplicative processing of inputs are both powerful and simple to train and understand. We believe they are valuable tools for cognitive explorations. Our model can be viewed as a subclass of networks built on sigma-pi units and we show how to derive the Kronecker product representation from the classical sigma-pi unit. We also show how the connectivity requirements of the Kronecker product can be relaxed considering statistical arguments. We use the multiplicative network to implement what we call an Elman topology, that is, a simple recurrent network (SRN) that supports aspects of language processing. As an application, we model the appearance of hallucinated voices after network damage, and show that we can reproduce results previously obtained with SRNs concerning the pathology of schizophrenia.

Reduced kinetic models of facilitative transport.

In spite of the highly complex structural dynamics of globular proteins, the processes mediated by them can usually be described in terms of relatively simple kinetic diagrams. How do complex proteins, characterized by undergoing transitions among a possibly very large number of intermediate states, exhibit functional properties that can be interpreted in terms of kinetic diagrams consisting of only a small number of states? One possible way of explaining this apparent contradiction is that, under some conditions, a reduction of the actual complete kinetic diagram that describes all of the macromolecular states and transitions takes place. In this work, we contribute with a formal basis to this interpretation, by generalizing the procedure of diagram reduction to the case of multicyclic kinetic diagrams. As an example, we apply the procedure to a complex kinetic model of facilitative transport. We develop Monte Carlo simulations to obtain the kinetic parameters of the complex model and we compare them with the ones analytically obtained from the reduced model. We confirm that, under some conditions, the kinetic behavior of the complex transporter is indistinguishable from the one of a four-state simple carrier model, derived from the former by diagram reduction. Besides introducing some novel methodological aspects, this work further contributes to the idea that, under many physiological and experimental conditions, a reduction occurs of the complete kinetic diagram that describes the dynamics of a globular protein.