Category Archives: Software Design
28 Oct Chemicals And Cognitive Performance
Outside Influences Mind-altering chemicals, stimulants, depressants and hallucinogens to name a few, affect the entire process of cognition, from receiving and processing input, through recognition and reasoning. They often even improve or impair our ability to act, affecting everything from muscle performance to language production and comprehension. Bacteria and viruses can also impact people. Things that come from outside […]
17 Oct Neural Conceptual Dependency
Conceptual Dependency Much of this blog has been about knowledge representation: how the brain might learn and process it, how cognitive functions treat knowledge, and now, how computers may store and process it. Conceptual structures and conceptual dependency theories for computation have been useful for categorizing and representing knowledge in intuitively simple and cognitively consistent […]
14 Oct Knowledge in Non-Neural Models
Non-Neural Models So far we have examined a number of models that are explicitly designed to be neuromorphic. This categorization is useful for two reasons: the apparent chaos or non-deterministic functioning of the brain is represented by these models; and neural networks explicitly use large numbers of distributed processors or neurodes that each contribute to […]
09 Oct Resolving a Paradox
In time and space some things are impossible, but the pen is more powerful than reality. I can draw a world in which stairs lead in crazy, mind-bending directions, and I could probably build a structure that implemented upside-down staircases to nowhere. But I could never build the cube shown here, because it violates some […]
28 Aug Weight Control for Knowledge
Stochastic Models Data, information and knowledge may be stored in many different ways in computers. Most artificial neural models rely heavily on stochastic or probabilistic techniques for establishing the internal structure that represents the data. The generalized delta rule for adaptation is an example of this sort of technique. The generalized delta rule, developed by D.E. […]
08 Aug The Fourth Dimension
To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season… Time is a fundamental and omnipresent element of context. It goes intrinsically with space, so much so, that we sometimes hear about a “time-space continuum” in which all things occur. Space and time are relevant to brain processes: electrical potential moves through physical pathways and brain […]
28 Jul Patterns in the Mind
As we look for suitable solution designs for representing the knowledge and processes we humans use to communicate, we realize that we have no idea what knowledge in the brain looks like. Further, we only have relatively vague ideas about the processes that occur in the brain as we produce and comprehend words, phrases and sentences. […]
26 Jul Parallel Distributed Pattern Processing
PDP Networks We have discussed recognition processes in the brain. Connectionism, a fundamentally implicit approach to neural modeling, was championed by the parallel distributed processing (PDP) group. PDP networks use many interconnected processing elements (PEs) that, according to the PDP Group, configure themselves to match input data with “minimum conflict or discrepancy” (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986, Vol. 2, […]
24 Jul Pattern Classification in Space
Pattern Classification Visual patterns can be recognized and classified based on prior knowledge: I see that this hairy animal has four legs and is about the same size as my dog, so I’ll assume it is (or classify it as) a dog. This may not be a correct classification, but it’s more correct than classifying it […]
17 Jul Are you who you say you are?
Humans are capable of prolonged kindness and extreme altruistic behavior. We are also capable of aggravating selfishness and unthinkable cruelty. Different levels of each polar opposite behavior exhibit themselves in the same person – indeed, every person. I believe that context plays an important role in these phenomena: the context of one’s upbringing, ones socio-economic […]