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A quick overview of LOCEN-ISTC-CNR theoretical analyses and system-level computational models of brain: from motivations to actions
Get PDFThe goal of this brief document is to give a focussed overview of the theoretical neuroscience and computational modelling work carried out by the Research Group Laboratory of Computational Embodied Neuroscience of the ISTC-CNR (http://www.istc.cnr.it/group/locen). The overview focusses on the work of LOCEN directed to understand the system-level overall brain organisation that allows organisms, in particular primates, to accomplish multiple motor behaviours sub-serving multiple needs, and on how such behaviors are acquired through learning processes. This involves some hot topics of current cognitive science, in particular: (a) the organisation of motivational systems at the basis of the learning and selection of motor behaviours; (b) the goal-directed/habitual hierarchical organisation of behaviour
Events and Activities: Is there an Ontology behind BPMN?
Get PDFIn the context of business process modelling, the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a de-facto standard with more than 70 commercial tools that currently support its use. Amongst its main modelling constructs, BPMN includes activities and events. However, the focus of the standard is on providing an intuitive graphical language, rather than formal semantics specifications. This results in semantic ambiguities regarding the interpretation of its modelling constructs. We investigate whether the main building blocks of BPMN commit to an ontological theory of the domain entities at hand, eventually clarifying this commitment by the approach of ontological analysis
An Experiment in Automatic Design of Robot Swarms: AutoMoDe-Vanilla, EvoStick, and Human Experts
Get PDFWe present an experiment in automatic design of robot swarms. For the first time in the swarm robotics literature, we perform an objective comparison of multiple design methods: we compare swarms designed by two automatic methods---vanilla and stick---with swarms manually designed by human experts. vanilla and stick have been previously published and tested on two tasks. To evaluate their generality, in this paper we test them without any modification on five new tasks. Besides confirming that vanilla is effective, our results provide new insight into the design of robot swarms. In particular, our results indicate that, at least under the adopted experimental protocol, not only does automatic design suffer from the reality gap, but also manual design. The results also show that both manual and automatic methods benefit from bias injection. In this work, bias injection consists in restricting the design search space to the combinations of pre-existing modules. The results indicate that bias injection helps to overcome the reality gap, yielding better performing robot swarms
LuciaWebGL: A New WebGL-Based Talking Head
No full textIn this DEMO we present the first worldwide WebGL implementation of a talking head (LuciaWebGL), and also the first WebGL talking head running on iOS mobile devices (Apple iPhone and iPad)
Neuroimaging in PTSD-related psychotherapies
Get PDFNeuroimaging studies conducted in PTSD patients who have undergone various psychological treatments have provided evidence of modifications in cerebral blood flow (Single Photon Emission Computer Tomography, SPECT), neuronal volume and density (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI) and, more recently, brain electric signal (EEG). However, to date the number of such studies is still far too remains limited since only a few psychotherapies have been investigated using SPECT and MRI. In this respect, a recent study designed to monitor psychotherapy-related neurobiological changes is expected to pave the way for a new concept in PTSD treatment investigations. The purpose of this chapter is to review the results of functional and structural changes being reported in PTSD treatments during the period from 1999 to 2012, to presenting a critical review and to analysanalyze is of the reported pathophysiological changes
Evolutionary swarm robotics: a theoretical and methodological itinerary from individual neuro-controllers to collective behaviours
Get PDFIn the last decade, swarm robotics gathered much attention in the research community. By drawing inspiration from social insects and other self-organizing systems, it focuses on large robot groups featuring distributed control, adaptation, high robustness, and flexibility. Various reasons lay behind this interest in similar multi-robot systems. Above all, inspiration comes from the observation of social activities, which are based on concepts like division of labor, cooperation, and communication. If societies are organized in such a way in order to be more efficient, then robotic groups also could benefit from similar paradigms
The Hindu Rights Action Force and the Definition of the "Indian Community" in Malaysia
No full textThe Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) started in 2006 as a coalition of non-governmental organizations and various individuals struggling for the preservation and protection of Hindus\u27 rights in Malaysia. Although the coalition began as a religious movement, it ended up widening the scope of its mandate so as to include various demands for social and economic rights. The present paper describes some representations of the \u27Indian community\u27 as these are expressed in HINDRAF\u27s discourses and in some supporters\u27 views on the condition of Malaysian Indians. In particular, the paper examines processes of ethnic boundary making and unmaking, more specifically how ethnic boundaries are both expanded and contracted on the basis of various socio-cultural and economic factors
Interaction between the lexical and sublexical spelling procedures: A study on Italian primary school children
No full textStudies investigating the interaction between lexical and sublexical information in a developmental context are rare and mainly focussed on reading abilities. The present study investigated the interaction between the lexical and sublexical spelling procedures by studying the effects of orthographic neighborhood on pseudoword spelling in Italian primary school children. A spelling-to-dictation task was administered to sixty-three typically developing children: 31 attending third grade and 32 attending fifth grade. Stimuli were pseudowords derived from high or low frequency words by changing either the first (early diverging pseudoword) or the fourth letter (late diverging pseudoword). The stimuli varied also for length (short vs. long). Results highlighted facilitatory lexical effects on pseudoword spelling. Long pseudowords were spelled as accurately as short stimuli if derived from high frequency base-words. Furthermore, early diverging pseudowords if derived from high frequency words were spelled more accurately than other types of stimuli The results support the view that, similarly to what predicted for opaque orthographies by current models of spelling, lexical information is exploited also by young learners of a transparent orthography as Italian
Yawn contagion in humans and bonobos: emotional affinity matters more than species.
Get PDFIn humans and apes, yawn contagion echoes emotional contagion, the basal layer of empathy. Hence, yawn contagion is a unique tool to compare empathy across species. If humans are the most empathic animal species, they should show the highest empathic response also at the level of emotional contagion. We gathered data on yawn contagion in humans (Homo sapiens) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) by applying the same observational paradigm and identical operational definitions .W eselected a naturalistic approach because experimental management practices can produce different psychological and behavioural biases in the two species, and differential attention to artificia lstimuli .Withi nspecies ,yaw ncontagio nwa shighes tbetween strongly bonded subjects. Between species, sensitivity to others\u27 yawns was higher in humans than in bonobos when involving kin and friends but was similar when considering weakly-bonded subjects. Thus, emotional contagion is not always high- est in humans. The cognitive components concur in empowering emotional affinity between individuals. Yet, when they are not in play, humans climb down from the empathic podium to return to the "understory", which our species shares with apes
Cerebellar metabolic involvement and its correlations with clinical parameters in vestibular neuritis
Get PDFAlthough vestibular neuritis (VN) cortical models are described in the literature, there is lack of knowledge regarding the exclusive cerebellar involvement. The aim of the present study was to analyze, by [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDGPET)/ computer tomography, regional cerebellar FDG uptake in eight right-handed VN patients (five females; three males; mean age 48 ? 7 years) during the first few days (PET0) and after 1 month (PET1) since symptoms onset. At both phases, patients underwent otoneurological examination and filled in a battery of validated questionnaires. Twenty-six cerebellar volumes of interest (VOI) were identified by the automated anatomical labeling library and normalized to thalamus FDG-PET uptake. Mean intensity within VOIs was calculated in both phases and processed by within-subjects ANOVA. A significantly lower (