Cognitive Systems:  A Brief Overview

Cognition occurs in the brain. that is within a network of neurons, axons, and synapses. Consequently, any study of cognition must be network based. We would assert that closure concepts offer the best mechanism for studying the behaviors of such networks. Earlier work has examined processes in other kinds of networks, especially social networks. Much of this work is equally applicable to neural networks and references to is is repeated here.
We have an interest in the role of continuity in cognitive development and learning.
There are many cognitive psychologists who have similar interests. Even though few are mathematically grounded, many have penetrating insight that should not be ignored. Some of the works that we have found to be valuable are:
  • Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner, Ellen Souberman, Mind in Society, Harvard, Univ. Press, 1978
  • [P15a] J.L. Pfaltz, The Role of Continuous Processes in Cognitive Development Mathematics for Applications , Vol. 4, (2015) 61-76
  • [P16] J.L. Pfaltz, Using Closed Sets to Model Cognitive Behavior Proc. Australian Conf. on Artificial Life and Computational Intelligence (ACALCI 2016) , LNCS 9592, 13-26, Camberra, ACT

    • More recently, we have turned our attention to the role of network structures in long-term memory (LTM) as well. Since cognitive concepts and eposidic events are constructs of the neural network comprising our brain, one would expect that stored memories would also be in the form of a network.
  • [P17] J.L. Pfaltz, Computational Processes that Appear to Model Human Memory Proc. 4th International Conf.,Algorithms for Computational Biology (AlCoB 2017) , LNBI 10252 (2017), 85-99 Aveiro, Portugal

    • It would be a mis-nomer to speak of literal non-neural ``cognition''; but there are molecular non-neural mechanisms at work in plants and other organisms with neural cells. All organisms react to their environment and it is easy to pass it off as ``genetically determined''. Nevertheless, for a bcterium to follow a food trail requires some molecular mechanism to identify a gradient and induce this single celled creature to move in that direction. We think cyclic protein polymers may play a role.
  • [P15c] J.L. Pfaltz, The Shape of Long-term Memory (unpublished monograph)
  • [P18c] J.L. Pfaltz, An Algorithmic Approach to the Representation of Biological Information and Long-term Memory 9th ACM Conf. on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Health Information, Washington, DC, (Oct. 2018): 579-580
  • [P18d] J.L. Pfaltz, Humans Have a Distributed, Molecular Long-term Memory> 2018 Internat. Conf. on Brain Informatics, BI 2018, Arlington, TX, (Dec. 2018): 1-12 (B203)
  • [P19a] J.L. Pfaltz, Cycle Matroids (2019) Submitted to Discrete Mathematics

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