Compression in conceptual integration networks gives rise to a variety of mental patterns which include counterfactuals, metaphor, and grammatical constructions. Novel dynamic structure is emergent in such networks. The present paper explores the notion of emergence. Data from mathematics, advertising, everyday metaphorical reasoning, and grammar is used to contrast the simplicity and familiarity of blended mental spaces with the complexity of emergent structures in full networks. Emergent structure does not reside primarily in blended spaces but rather in the overall networks. This accounts for the paradox that novel mathematical concepts (e.g. complex numbers) may have a straightforward organization, or that complex meanings (e.g. causatives) may be encoded by “simple”, familiar grammar.

http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/files/publication/j2005_4_02_9806.pdf

Phantoms in the Brain

Compression and Emergent Structure

This article takes a convergent evidence approach to visual communication; how the brain functions in perception, how this relates tofeeling and logical reasoning, and how we respond to our visual world, These are the keyprobative areas implicit in every act of seeing.As new medical imagingtechniques make the brain’s inner workings moreaccessible, we take thefirst rudimentarysteps toward developing a unified theory of how the mind works, and therefore toward understanding how we receive, process, and act on visual information, A neurological approach to perception yields insights into those mechanisms that empower the visual image.

Perception and Visual Communication Theory

36 years on the pattern recognition front lecture given at ICPR'2000 in Barcelona, Spain on the occasion of receiving the K.S. Fu prize

This article discusses demoralization in patients with chronic pain and the role of psychotherapy at combating chronic demoralization associated with chronic pain. The advantages of the biopsychosocial conceptual framework for the understanding of chronic pain are highlighted. Demoralization may be viewed as a combination of distress and subjective incompetence. While the distress experienced by the patient may be understandable and commensurate to the predicament, the co-occurrence of subjective incompetence (the polar opposite of resilience) and its escalation to helplessness, and hopelessness may result in suicidal attempts, demands for euthanasia, or death by suicide. The complexity of chronic pain and its relationship to demoralization may be examined from multiple perspectives. Biological, psychological, social and cultural variables play varying roles depending on the observer’s perspective and the context of the observation. The role of psychotherapy in chronic pain may be viewed in terms of multiple pathways through which language, cognitive style, behavior, relationships, attitude towards pain, and awareness of the body modify the relative influences of top-down and bottom-up processing of information within the pain neuromatrix. Various psychotherapeutic interventions developed for patients with chronic pain are reviewed and recommendations are made for future research.

Chronic Pain, Chronic Demoralization, and the Role of Psychotherapy

Similarities in behaviour between autistic savants and animals have been suggested, most notably by Temple Grandin [1] in her book Animals in Translation 2005, and this theory seems to have gained some consensus among other neuroscientists who are not specialists in animal cognition. Here we aim to discuss two specific parallels between the behavioural characteristics of animals and those of autistic savants that have been raised in relation to Grandin's book. Autistic savants show extraordinary skills, particularly in music, mathematics, and drawing. Do animals sometimes show forms of extreme (though, of course, different) cognitive skills confined to particular domains that resemble those shown by autistic savants? We argue that the extraordinary cognitive feats shown by some animal species can be better understood as adaptive specialisations that bear little, if any, relationship to the unusual skills shown by savants. It has also been argued that autistic savants “think in detail”, and that this is the key to their extraordinary skills. Do animals have privileged access to lower level sensory information before it is packaged into concepts, as has been argued for autistic humans, or do they process sensory inputs according to rules that pre-empt or filter what is perceived even at the lowest levels of sensory processing? We argue that animals, like nonautistic humans, process sensory information according to rules, and that this manner of processing is a specialised feature of the left hemisphere of the brain in both humans and nonhuman animals. Hence, we disagree with the claim that animals are similar to autistic savants. However, we discuss the possibility that manipulations that suppress activity of the left hemisphere and enhance control by the right hemisphere shift attention to the details of individual stimuli, as opposed to categories and higher-level concepts, and can thereby make performance more savant-like in both humans and animals. (Editors note: See Box 1 for Grandin's response.)

Box 1. Response by Temple Grandin to the Essay “Are Animals Autistic Savants?”
Editors note: We asked Temple Grandin to respond to the essay “Are Animals Autistic Savants?”, which presents a critique, based on studies of comparative animal cognition, of Grandin's premise that animals and autistic savants share similarities in cognition.

The Essay “Are Animals Autistic Savants?” by Giorgio Vallortigara et al. provides a fascinating overview of the most recent research on animal cognition. I think the basic disagreement between the authors and me arises from the concept of details—specifically how details are perceived by humans, who think in language, compared with animals, who think in sensory-based data. Since animals do not have verbal language, they have to store memories as pictures, sounds, or other sensory impressions. Sensory-based information by its very nature is more detailed than word-based memories. As a person with autism, all my thoughts are in photo-realistic pictures. I can search my own brain, like using Google, for images. As I read about the cognition experiments, I saw the birds performing in my imagination like a virtual reality computer system. The main similarity between animal thought and my thought is the lack of verbal language. Verbal language narrates the images when I “surf the Internet” inside my own brain. If you give me a “keyword,” such as “peanut,” I start to see images like a series of slides shown one after the other. The first image was the Planter's Peanut logo, the second was a Western restaurant that serves peanuts, and the third was a bag of peanuts on a plane.

The Essay by Vallortigara et al. clearly showed that cognition is very real in animals. In normal humans, higher brain processes cover up the sensory-based processing that we share with animals. In Animals in Translation, I discussed the work of Bruce Miller, who studied patients with frontal-temporal lobe dementia [1,2]. As the disease destroyed higher brain function, art and music talent emerged. The sensory-based, more-detailed thinking we share with animals was unmasked.

I was most interested to learn that the skills that taxi drivers had developed to navigate by using land markers “had come at the price of acquiring new visual spatial information” according to the authors. Further experiments need to be done with birds to either confirm or disprove Vallortigara et al.'s hypothesis that birds such as the Clark's nutcracker, which has savant-like memory for food storage, has retained good cognition in other domains. My hypothesis is that birds that have savant-like skills for food storage sites or remembering migration routes may be less flexible in their cognition. It is well known that people with autism do poorly on the Wisconsin card sorting task, where colors and shapes have to be sorted into different categories. The person with autism is slower to respond correctly when the category is switched from a shape to a color.

An operant conditioning task could be used to compare flexible problem solving in migratory and food-storing bird species to species that do not have savant-like skills. The task could be to peck a lever when a light comes on. After the bird had learned this, the stimulus would be switched to a sound. I predict that the more savant-like birds will require more trials to switch back and forth between the light and the sound cue.

I am pleased that my book has stimulated so much discussion, and I hope it stimulates more research on animal cognition.

Temple Grandin is the author of Animals in Translation and is Professor of Animal Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States of America. E-mail: ude.etatsoloc@rellim.lyrehC

References

1. Miller BL, Boone K, Cummings JL, Read SL, Mishkin F (2000) Functional correlates of musical and visual ability in frontal temporal dementia. Br J Psych 176:458-463.

2. Miller BL, Cummings J, Mishkin F, Boone K, Prince F, et al. (1998) Emergence of art talent in frontal temporal dementia. Neurology51:978-981.

/pdf/are-animals-autistic-savants-do7gapjxhn.pdf

Phantoms in the Brain

Citations

Compression and Emergent Structure

Perception and Visual Communication Theory

36 years on the pattern recognition front lecture given at ICPR'2000 in Barcelona, Spain on the occasion of receiving the K.S. Fu prize

Chronic Pain, Chronic Demoralization, and the Role of Psychotherapy

Are Animals Autistic Savants

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