Morning
(9:00-12:00)

W01: Franklin & Baars
W02: Peigneux & Schwartz
W03: Stamenov

W04: Lloyd
W05: Bridgeman & Proffitt
W06: Call

W07: Hare
W08: Davidoff
W09: Blakemore
W10: Prinz & de Gelder

Stan Franklin & Bernard J. Baars
Using a computational model of consciousness and cognition

Modeling consciousness allows the introduction of principled computational mechanisms for all functions associated with consciousness including perception, working memory, associative memory, emotions, attention, action selection, deliberation, voluntary action, language understanding and generation, automization of tasks, and several types of learning. Some of these functions are largely unconscious but shape conscious experience. IDA, a running software agent based on global workspace theory, provides such mechanisms for all these. Very many questions (conjectures) concerning the relationship between consciousness and other aspects of cognition can be asked of the model and answered there. These answers provide testable hypotheses about what happens in humans. For one example, the model yields a new and more intuitive interpretation of Libet's "free will" data. In addition to a grasp of the major points of global workspace theory and of recent brain imaging evidence supporting it, workshop participants should emerge with a detailed understanding of the model and its mechanisms. Documentation sufficient to allow participants to pose questions to the model and find answers/hypotheses will be provided. Such questions as cannot be posed point out gaps in the model that remain to be filled. Some of these will also be discussed. The Conscious Software Research Group, creators of IDA, will be willing to help participants pose and answer questions subsequent to the workshop.

Stan Franklin

Computer Science, University of Memphis
http://www.msci.memphis.edu/~franklin

Bernard J. Baars

The Neurosciences Institute
http://www.nsi.edu

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Philippe Peigneux & Sophie Schwartz:
Memory, Dreaming and Consciousness in the Sleeping Brain

 

Sleep is characterized by temporary, but significant changes in conscious experience. Human sleep is also and primarily identified by a specific behavioral pattern (lying down posture, immobility, closed eyes, lack of responsiveness to stimulation), associated with measurable neurophysiological modifications (distinctive activity of the brain, neurotransmitters levels, and reduced processing of external inputs). Therefore, studying sleep offers new insights into the varieties of subjective experiences, and their relationship with particular brain mechanisms.

Brain imaging studies have allowed a macroscopic description of the regional specificity characterizing the functional neuroanatomy of human sleep stages. These studies have found similarities between the fundamental sleep mechanisms in man and non-human animals. Moreover, neuroimaging studies have also started to provide new hints as to the way recent memories are reprocessed during sleep. Our knowledge of the functional neuroanatomy of the sleeping brain may also be used to better understand dreaming mechanisms, and specific features of cognitive events analyzed from dream reports. Detailed analysis of characteristic dream content might in turn provide new constraints on our interpretation of neuroimaging maps of sleep, and make specific predictions for future neuroimaging studies.

In this workshop, we explore how combining brain imaging with the investigation of dream and sleep-related memory phenomenon might constitute a unique and powerful way to study mechanisms of information processing in the human sleeping brain. We will present methods for studying neuronal events as well as experiential events occurring in the sleeping but functional brain. We will discuss some data in relation to memory and visual processing.

The following points will be developed:

1. What is sleep? Recent data investigating the functional neuroanatomy of human sleep and its fundamental mechanisms. Emphasis on the contribution of brain imaging methods to the description of these mechanisms.

2. Brain imaging evidence for memory reprocessing during sleep. What is the role of sleep in memory consolidation and brain plasticity? Evidence from behavioral and neuroanatomical studies. PET data suggesting
experience- and information-dependent cerebral reactivations during human sleep: discussion.

3. Cognitive and neuropsychological approach to dream content. Methodological note about dream scales, lexical statistical procedures, and phenomenological assessment. Testing the continuity between waking and dream experiences: sensory modalities in the dreams of sighted and blind people, as revealed by lexical analysis.

4. Yet, dreams are often bizarre! Similarities between bizarre features in normal dreaming and neuropsychological syndromes. Regional brain activity during sleep and pattern of lesions in specific neuropsychological syndromes. Examples of visual dissociations and misidentifications in dreams. Cognitive topography of dream incongruities as an important source of information about functional segregation and integration in the human brain: discussion.

Philippe Peigneux

Cyclotron Research Center, Liege University
http://www.ulg.ac.be/crc

Sophie Schwartz

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN), University College London
http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/members/

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Maxim I. Stamenov:
Language and Consciousness: A linguistic perspective

On the one hand, language is felt as somehow indispensable for the way we experience ourselves as conscious beings. On the other hand, the current mainstream linguistic theory claims that language structure is in principle inaccessible to consciousness. The aim of the present workshop will be to try to reconcile the commonsense intuition and the technically justifiable point of view about the nature and the way of derivation of language structure.

During the first part of the workshop a view of the language structure will be offered with an accent on what makes it different from the cognitive structures in other formats of thought, e.g., in the formats of spatial cognition and abstract (propositional) thought.

During the second part of the workshop, the relationship between language units (e.g., syllable, morpheme, word, sentence, and utterance) and their representability as components of explicit cognitive structures will be discussed. The main point of this presentation will be that language structure provides clues for a sophisticated multi-layered access to the vertical and horizontal structure of consciousness, starting with the perceptual experience of voice and finishing with the intentionality of interpersonal communication, (as coded in utterance meaning + conventional and conversational implicatures). The study of the hierarchy of language-specific structure (starting with the syllable and finishing with utterance) provides us, thus, with the royal road toward the empirical investigation of processes and representations not only available in but also directly and indirectly supporting consciousness.

During this part of the workshop an analysis will be carried out of the representational vs. derivational aspects of sentence structure as providing the key to the specificity of the language-specific format of thinking and becoming conscious. The derivational aspect as epitomized in the functional projections of Agreement and Tense imposes the basic dynamics of movements and integrations (merges) in constructing on-line of sentence structure toward grammatical well-formedness. The representational aspect will be analysed as a ratio between (i) the lexicalization pattern, subcategorization frame and theta grid of the verb; (ii) the adjunct and deictic configuration; (iii) the potential for extending clause structure with adverbial functional projections; and (iv) the possibilities to construct sentences consisting of more than one finite clause. The dynamical aspect of conscious figure/ground processing is serially imposed upon sentence structure during the online processing in understanding and generating utterances in conversation.

During the third part of the workshop the functional status of language in relation to consciousness will be considered. The hypothesis to be offered during the workshop is as follows: Language developed as a necessarily unconscious function in the service of communication as means of dissociated (self-alienated) representation of oneself to oneself. The challenging point to be made is that the capacity to represent 'objectively' the intentional object of consciousness requires as a necessary concomitant the dissociation of the perspective of the central executive (implicit self) from the perspective of the explicable self that 'aims at' an object. This becomes possible only with the advent of language. Verbal consciousness thus is intentional not only from the point of view of its 'aiming at an object', but also in relation to a 'perspective of a self' which is strategic (but not that of just being perceptually 'thrown in the world'). This feature of linguistically supported consciousness decisively contributes to the way self-consciousness functions in humans - in a format incommensurable to that of all other biological species in nature.

The acquisition and use of language radically alters the way of functioning of consciousness. It adds to the serial conscious awareness (consisting of the dual attentional structure of figure/ground) paradigmatic and syntagmatic hierarchies of several levels of recursivity each. With the advent of language the mutual determination and the online dynamics of available, accessible and in principle inaccessible to consciousness cognitive structure become incomparable to any of the formats of different perceptual modalities and of spatial cognition alone.

Suggested literature:

Bartsch, Renate. 2002. Consciousness Emerging. The dynamics of perception, imagination, action, memory, thought, and language (AiCR, 39). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Chafe, Wallace. 1994. Discourse, Consciousness, and Time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 1993. Language and Thought. Wakefield, RI: Moyer Bell.

Jackendoff, Ray. 1997. The Architecture of Language Faculty. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.

Langacker, Ronald. 1987, 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vols. I-II. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Stamenov, Maxim. (ed.). 1997. Language Structure, Discourse, and the Access to Consciousness (AiCR, 12). Amsterdam & Philadelphia. John Benjamins.

Maxim I. Stamenov

Seminar für Slavische Philologie
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

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W04

Dan Lloyd:
Consciousness and Functional Brain Imaging: Methods and Applications

Functional brain imaging, especially functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), now offers extraordinary views of the cognizing brain. To adapt fMRI observations to the study of consciousness requires rethinking the relationship of consciousness and cognition, and accordingly rethinking analytical methods applicable to the data collected in fMRI experiments. This workshop will examine these issues, as well as display selected meta-analyses of fMRI data. The new analyses suggest how the foundations of consciousness (as discussed in phenomenology) are detectable in the conscious human brain.

Specific topics covered by the workshop include:

1. FMRI, a basic introduction, from the physics of magnetic resonance to the construction of images.

2. Cognition as studied in cognitive neuroscience, reviewing the assumption of functional localization and the methods of image analysis currently in widespread use.

3. Phenomenology of perception, a basic overview of themes mainly in Husserl, especially his Thing and Space and Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness.

4. New methods for fMRI interpretation in the study of consciousness, as they follow from phenomenology.

5. Display of the methods and results as applied to scan data in several fMRI experiments archived at the National fMRI Data Center (US).

6. Issues in "neuroinfomatics" arising in the manipulation of gigabyte datasets with PCs and Macs.

Workshop participants will receive demonstration data from the fMRIDC, and access to software tools for "neurophenomenology."

Dan Lloyd

Department of Philosophy and Program in Neuroscience
Trinity College

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Bruce Bridgeman:
Conscious and unconscious visual processing: Cognitive and sensorimotor aspects of vision

 

An empirical path into the properties of consciousness has opened up with the contrast between a cognitive visual system, whose contents are consciously accessible, and a sensorimotor system whose outputs are not consciously represented. Perception, and all of traditional visual psychophysics, is based on the cognitive system. Output of the more recently discovered sensorimotor system is isomorphic with some physical property of the world, such as location of a target or slope of a hill, so that measures of this system must also be have a 1:1 relationship with the relevant aspect of the environment.

There is currently a lively dispute about the neurological underpinning of this distinction - are there two separate representations of visual space in the brain, one accessible to consciousness and the other not, or is a single representation used in different ways? Not in dispute is the dissociation of function revealed by measures of the two systems. Visual illusions, including static illusions such as the Roelofs effect, bias cognitive measures (verbal report of target position) without affecting sensorimotor measures (jabbing the same target). Similarly, illusions of visual context affect perception of stimulus size more than they affect motor behavior toward the same stimuli.

The workshop will include demonstrations of these effects as well as discussions of theory. Especially for younger scientists, methods will be reviewed in the context of an area where cutting-edge contributions can be made without large equipment and the large budgets that go with it.

Workshop Outline

1st Hour:
Introductions
History
Early animal studies
Neurological patients
Psychophysical methods

2nd Hour:
Modern conceptions of cognitive and sensorimotor systems
Grasping
Reaching
Locomotion and geography
Conscious and unconscious aspects of visual function

3rd Hour:
Interactive demonstrations
The induced Roelofs effect in perception
Slopes of hills
Jabbing at the Müller-Lyer figure
Conclusions
State-of-the-art science with small budgets
Current status and future directions

References

Bridgeman, B., Gemmer, A., Forsman, T. and Huemer, V. (2000). Properties
of the sensorimotor branch of the visual system. Vision Research,
40, 3539-3552.

Daprati, E. & Gentilucci, M. (1997). Grasping an illusion.
Neuropsychologia, 35, 1577-82.

Milner, D., & Goodale, M. (1995). The Visual Brain in Action. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

Paillard, J. (1987). Cognitive versus sensorimotor encoding of spatial
information. In P. Ellen & C. Thinus-Blanc (Eds.), Cognitive
Processes and Spatial Orientation in Animal and Man. Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

Bruce Bridgeman

UCSC

 

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Josep Call
Animal cognition and consciousness

In the past two decades, cognitive approaches to the study of animal behavior have attracted increasing research attention. One of the fields in which this "cognitive revolution" has been particularly stimulating is social behavior. Social situations are particularly challenging to individuals who have to compete and cooperate with conspecifics to obtain limited resources such as food or mates. The vast majority of studies on social cognition have focused on the ability of various species to infer the mental states of others (i.e., Theory of Mind) in either cooperative or competitive situations. However, much less research has been conducted on how much various species understand about their own mental states (i.e., metacognition). Most of the research on this topic has been based on studies about imitation, or more importantly, studies on mirror self-recognition in various species. After presenting recent developments in those two areas, I will argue that the data they generate rarely allows researchers to make solid inferences about metacognition. Instead I will argue that recent studies based on presenting subjects with uncertain situations and observing either their escape responses or their search for additional information are more promising avenues of research to answer the question of how much animals may know about their own mental states.

First hour: Technical and social cognition
Byrne, Whiten, Dunbar, Premack

Second hour: Imitation and mirror self-recognition
Tomasello, Whiten, Gallup, Povinelli, Call, Heyes, Custance, Anderson, Mitchell

Third hour: Uncertainty studies with animals as a tool to study metacognition Smith, Washburn, Call, Carpenter, Hampton

Josep Call

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

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Brian Hare:
The Phylogenetic Origins of Theory of Mind

 

Abstract

A major focus of comparative studies of social cognition has been investigating the phylogenetic origins of theory of mind. Given that hominin fossils are all but silent in regard to the evolution of specific human cognitive abilities, studies of extant hominoids represent one of the only avenues available to testing hypotheses of human social cognitive evolution. Comparative studies of great apes and other primates potentially allow for conclusions regarding 1) the social cognitive abilities of our last common ape ancestor and 2) primate social cognitive evolution. With these two types of information we can approximate the degree to which human social cognition differs from that of our last common ape ancestor and evaluate factors that were responsible for this change. In this workshop we will review and discuss the problems and progress of this endeavor focusing on previous research with chimpanzees. In addition, given the difficulty of studying theory of mind in great apes and other animals we will consider the prospects for future research on animal consciousness.

Outline

HOUR 1: origins of theory of mind
- What is theory of mind?
- Ontogeny of theory of mind in humans
- What can we learn about theory mind from studying animals?
- Why has research focused on primates and especially chimpanzees?

HOUR 2: approaches to studying theory of mind in chimpanzees
- The consensus: little evidence that animals do not think about the thoughts of others.
- Can we learn from previous work and develop new approaches to study Theory of Mind in animals?
- Can considering primate socioecology increase the validity of social
cognitive experiments with primates?

HOUR 3: new evidence for theory of mind in chimpanzees
- Do chimpanzees know what conspecifics do and do not see?
- Do chimpanzees know what conspecifics know?
- Do chimpanzees discriminate between and individual who is unwilling and unable to share?

Helpful Readings

Tomasello & Call, 1997. Primate Cognition. Oxford U. Press. (Chapter 10)

Povinelli, 2000. Folk Physics for Apes: the chimpanzee's theory of how the world works. Oxford U. Press (Chapter 2)

Hare, Call, & Tomasello, 2001. Do chimpanzees know what conspecifics know? Animal Behaviour. 61, 139-151.

Brian Hare

Department of Anthropology, Harvard University

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Jules Davidoff:
The Role of Language in Perceptual Categorisation

 

Our recent research has shown that categorisation abilities that might have been thought to be non-verbal are heavily dependent on language. The workshop will concentrate on the neuropsychological and cross-lingual aspects of that research.

Data will be presented for discussion from patients without perceptual problems who were unable to divide groups of colours or faces except by the principle of perceptual similarity. Stimuli constructed on a continuum of equally spaced intervals, posed an insoluble problem for these patients. Whereas, normal observers form clusters around apparent foci (e.g, red, yellow etc), the patient apparently could only proceed on a pair-wise similarity judgement that lead to a lengthy but futile search for groups. Our observations are not entirely new but the earlier reports of such behaviour (for example those of Goldstein) are now largely ignored if not actively dismissed. On reading the original reports, the behaviour we have observed only replicates what he thought to be a widespread and necessary concomitant of aphasia. Our data has extended the earlier neuropsychological enquiry to issues concerning the implicit versus explicit understanding of perceptual categories.

The cross-lingual research sought to replicate and extend the work of Rosch Heider on the Dani of New Guinea with a comparable group who speak a language with 5 basic colour terms. Rosch Heider's classic results have been widely interpreted as showing clear support for universal colour categories. The Dani seemed to have much the same cognitive representation of colour as Americans, even though they appeared to have only two basic colour terms. Some of Rosch Heider's key results could, however, be interpreted as supporting linguistic relativity rather than universality. That reinterpretation will be discussed in the light of some non-replications, the results of new cross-lingual investigations in Papua New Guinea and Namibia, and laboratory investigations.

Discussion should include issues concerning the extent to which language constrains categorisation and the evolutionary consequences of those constraints.

Jules Davidoff

University of London http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/academic/ps/davidoff.htm
http://www.gold.ac.uk/academic/ps/davidoff.htm

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Sarah-Jayne Blakemore:
Forward models and consciousness

Pick up a nearby object. Were you conscious of your intentions to move your arm, reach out and grasp the object? Were you aware of all the adjustments you made to the fine details of your movements, such as muscle contractions, grip aperture and grip force? When do such movement corrections become available to awareness? The movement of your arm you just made probably felt quite different from someone else pushing your arm. We do not normally find it difficult to distinguish between self-generated and externally produced movements and sensations. What are the brain processes underlying the distinction? What happens if this mechanism if impaired?

This workshop will discuss the idea that the central nervous system contains 'forward models', which make predictions of the sensory consequences of intentions and actions. Forward model prediction is thought to be useful for motor learning and adaptation and for attributing movements and sensations to their correct source. In the past 10 years, research using psychophysical and brain imaging techniques in normal subjects and patients has shed a great deal of light on the behavioural and neural processes that underlie the different components of the forward model.

This interactive workshop will be organized as follows, each section lasting approximately 30 minutes:

1st section: The problem of distinguishing self- and externally generated events
** A philosophical perspective
** A psychological perspective
** A physiological perspective
** A computational perspective - introduction to forward models
** Forward models, prediction and behaviour

2nd section: Awareness of intentions, predictions and consequences of action
** Theoretical perspective
** Some empirical evidence
** A demonstration

3rd section: The neural correlates of forward model prediction
** The cerebellum is involved in prediction
** The parietal cortex is involved as classifying events as 'other'
** The frontal lobes are involved in monitoring the 'self'

4th section: Impairments of the forward model
** Abnormalities in the control of action (e.g. apraxia and anarchic
hand syndromes)
** Abnormalities in the awareness of action (e.g. phantom limbs,
utilisation behaviour and delusions of control)

5th section: Modelling other people's minds
** Can forward models provide information about other people's
intentions and actions?
** Understanding other people's minds
** Simulation theory, simulation in the brain
** Imitation in child development, imitation in the brain

References

Frith, CD, Blakemore S-J & Wolpert, DM. Abnormalities in the awareness
and control of action. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London: Biological Sciences 355(1404), 1771-1788 (2000)

Wolpert DM & Ghahramani Z. Computational principles of movement
neuroscience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3 Suppl:12, 12-7 (2000)

Blakemore, S-J, & Decety, J. From the perception of action to the
understanding of intention. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2(1), 561-7
(2001)

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

INSERM unit 280, Lyon, France http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/princdir/frithgroup.html

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Jesse Prinz & Beatrice de Gelder:
Emotions and Consciousness

 

Emotions are rapidly becoming a central topic of research in cognitive science. New theories and findings from various disciplines are contributing to a more complete understanding what emotions are and how they contribute to mental life. As a result, we are also gaining deeper insight into the relationship between emotions and consciousness. Here, two questions are of special importance. First, one might want to know whether emotions can be unconscious. Answering this question will contribute to an understanding of the nature of emotions and lead to a more general appreciation of the role of consciousness in decision making and behavioral control. Second, one might wonder how emotions become conscious. Addressing this question provides a useful comparison to research on conscious perception (especially vision) and allows us to ask whether different forms of consciousness have similar underpinnings. This workshop provides a general background in current emotion science and then takes up these and other questions pertaining to emotional consciousness. We will examine work from psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and neurology, and cognitive neuroscience. In one part of the workshop, Beatrice van Gelder, will explore some recent experimental paradigms in more detail for an in depth exploration of an important trend in experimental work.

The workshop will be organized as follows. Examples of authors who may be discussed are indicated in parentheses.

Part 1. Competing Theories of Emotion (Prinz)
* Cognitive theories of emotion (e.g., Lazarus, Nussbaum, Averill)
* Appraisal, propositional attitudes, construal, social construction
* Non-cognitive theories of emotion (e.g., Hume, James, Damasio, Zajonc)
* Feeling theories, somatic theories, drives
* The role of emotions (e.g., Damasio, Isen, Forgas)
* Decision making
* Memory and attention
* Identity and self-consciousness

Part 2. Conscious and non-conscious Emotions: Background (Prinz/de Gelder)
* Different answers from different theories of emotion
* Cognitive/non-cognitive theories
* Arguments for the necessity of consciousness (e.g, Frued, Clore)
* Arguments for unconscious emotions (e.g., LeDoux, Lycan, Berridge, Ohman)

Part 3. Emotions as studied in cognitive neuroscience (de Gelder)
* Neural circuits involved in conscious and unconscious emotions * Animal models of affective information processing
* Emotional presence and multisensory perception of affect
* Are there qualitative differences between conscious and non-conscious systems for emotion

Part 4 Implications and New Frontiers (Prinz /de Gelder)
* How do emotions fit with current theories of consciousness? (e.g., Tye, Rosenthal, Block)
* Emotional consciousness and self-consciousness (e.g., Damasio)
* Emotional disorders and consciousness

Some books with background on emotion theory:
R. Cornelius: The Science of Emotion. Prentice Hall.
A. Damasio: Descartes' Error. Putnam.
J. LeDoux: The Emotional Brain. Simon & Schuster.
J. Prinz: Emotional Perception. Oxford University

Jesse Prinz

Washington University in St. Louis
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~jprinz/

Beatrice de Gelder

Tilburg University

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