"Fungus Eaters" and Artificial Intelligence: a tribute to Masanao Toda

In 1962 Masanao Toda published a revolutionary study that was the origin of the idea of virtual complete autonomous agents and that preluded branches very important in Artificial Intelligence like autonomous robots (Brooks, 1991), swarm intelligence (Bonabeau, Dorigo and Theraulaz, 1999) or evolutionary robotics (Nolfi and Floreano, 2001). Against a cognitive science centered in a symbolic perspective, Toda analyses systems capable of behaving autonomously in an environment without external aids. This is a very hard problem in Artificial Intelligence. Complete autonomous systems have to incorporate capabilities for deciding what to do interacting with the environment.

In his article "The design of a fungus eater" (Behavioral Science 7, 164-83), Toda "consider(s) a design of a robot to be sent to a hypothetical planet as a robot uranium miner, which sustains itself by eating fungi as its energy source". This solitary creature feeds on a type of fungus that grows on the planet and the more uranium ore collects, the more reward it will get (see also Pfeifer, 1996, 3-12). The "Solitary Fungus Eater" (SFE) has means of collection and locomotion and means for decision making interacting with the perception of the environment. It must be autonomous and self-sufficient because it can not receive external aids: it is a virtual adaptive system, a genial idea in 1961-62. Besides Toda introduces another insight: the notion of bodily designed agent. He employs a choice program for regulating the behavior of the "Eater" using stochastic distributions. Toda defines the expected amount of uranium exploitation by means of a function f indicating the expected amount of uranium exploitation as a function of fungus storage (Toda, 1982, p. 114). The problem is that f cannot be determined until the choice program is fixed and the optimal choice program is given only after the function f is specified. The key is in defining adaptability in an unknown world.

But Toda advances almost 30 years and proposes for investigating matters like emotion, irrationality, social psychology, etc., for autonomous agents. Does SFE have emotion? Of course, the answer depends upon the definition and perhaps it can be defined as a particular state of mind accompanied by a high level of energy mobilization. After Rosalin Picard will introduce the paradigm of "affective computing" and nowadays many researchers design virtual agents or robots incorporating emotions or something like that: Lola Cañamero, Eva Hudlicka, Darryl Davis, Rolf Pfeifer, Thomas Wehrle and many others (see the excellent introduction by Ruebenstrunk, 1998, http://www.ruebenstrunk.de/)

Besides Toda thinks that apparently irrational behavior of human being can also be incorporated in the SFE. Herbert Simon had spoke about bounded rationality, notion exploited after by Stuart Russell or Gerd Gigerenzer and, in the meantime, the omnipresent contribution by Toda.

And what to say about the communication and cooperation between agents? Toda (1982, p. 127) believes that "optimal cooperation programs for Fungus Eaters will provide a heuristic for the sciences of human interaction" and...for robotics? Chains of e-pucks robots colaborating between them (see Francesco Mondada in http://www.e-puck.org/) demonstrate this prophecy in 2008.

Masanao Toda passed away on 5th September 2006. Who was Masanao Toda? Was he the prophet of a new world inhabited by artificial autonomous agents?

Social Cognition in Berlin: "XXIX International Congress of Psychology"

The "XXIX International Congress of Psychology", organized by "The German Federation of Psychologists´Associations", under the auspices of the "International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS)" was held in Berlin on July 20-25, 2008.

On Monday, 21 July, Don Spangler in "Computer measurement of motives", described the development and validation of a computer program to measure implicit motives. This program analyses namely speeches, written materials, interviews, transcripts of meetings, and articles appearing in the business press of USA.

Hugo Kehr gave an overview of his compensatory model of motivation and volition. Structural components of the model are implicit motives, explicit motives, and perceived abilities. Its functional processes are volitional regulation (compensating for inadequate motivation) and problem solving (compensating for inadequate perceived abilities).

In "Routines and decision making", Tilmann Betsch emphasizes that empirical evidence indicates that routines influence behavior generation, information search, appraisal, choice and the implementation of a chosen behavior in human decision makers.

Professor Gao presented a computer program which can divide the critical thinking procedure into several distinctive stages, and diagnose individual logic fallacy instantly.

In the "Social Cognition I" session, Julia Herfordt spoke about social facilitation. Professor Herfordt tested Zajonc´s social facilitation hypothesis with an antisaccade task.

Professors Shi and Wang argued that two different imputations in opposite directions may occur at the starting point of the empathy process and that whether the information of imputation comes from external or internal source will determine which one really happens: the results showed that the difference of information source affected the way how participants used the information to infer what other people would know and act.

To end this paper session, Professor López Alonso analyzed social representations from their inferential bases and structures as cognitive processes.

The paper session of "Social Psychology" was opened by an interesting contribution about the possible existence of structures isomorphic to feedback cycles in social psychological phenomena; Professor Caraiani analyzed classes of symmetries and synchronization of chaotic phenomena through the consideration of the correlation between cyclic invariants.

On Tuesday, 22 July, Professor Bertrams chaired a Symposium about "Self-regulatory strength and ego depletion". According to Professor Schmeichel, both cognitive load and ego depletion undermine self-control but they don´t operate via the same mechanism.

Professor Bertrams believes that success in self-control and complex thinking depends on a resource comparable to the strength of a muscle. This regulatory strength can be boosted by regular self-control effort. In the afternoon, Ulrich Wiesmann presented his structural modelling approach for the generalized health-related self-concept. Professor Wiesmann starts out from Markus´dynamic self-concept theory and finds support for a hierarchical factor structure.

On Wednesday, 23 July, a paper session about "Self-regulation" was chaired by Professors Sassenberg and Mamali. Jan Crusius analyzed the role of spontaneous social comparisons in automatic goal pursuit. Professor Crusius suggests that social comparison is a mechanism contributing to goal priming.

Waclaw Bak specified three dimensions of self-regulation. Based on conceptions of of Higgins, Markus, and Ogilvie, the self-system is defined as a cognitive structure, composed of different self beliefs (ideal-self, ought-self, undesired-selves, can-self, impossible-self) and discrepancies between them. Professor Bak hypothesizes that the self-system one can describe in terms of three dimensions: (a) negative-self standards; (b) positive self-standards and (c) can-self-standards.

The paper session "Social Cognition II", chaired by Carlos Pelta, was opened by Professor Kwong with an oral presentation on perceptions of progress towards goal. Following to Professor Kwong, perceived progress plays a critical role in people´s motivation to persist toward a goal. She has been demonstrated that while figure displays exert dominant influences over corresponding numerical displays, this effect is dependent on the relative fluency in processing the two different modes of information.

Professor Pelta presented "Implementation intentions and artificial agents" in collaboration with Professor González Marqués at the Complutense University of Madrid. The contents of this presentation have been exposed thoroughly in this blog.

Finally, in the paper session about the impact of goals and volitional processes on learning, Katrin Jorke presented Trait Procrastination as a failure in self-regulation that can have a negative impact on the efficiency of self-regulated learning.

During the Congress, an exhibition of posters allowed to obtain relevant information about the progress of Psychology in the world. Special thanks to the Organization Committee for their professional contribution in organizing this manifestation. I hope that the XXX Congress in Cape Town will be a success.

12th Congress of the European Federation of Neurological Societies

The 12th Congress of the European Federation of Neurological Societies was held in Madrid on August 23-26, 2008. Approximately 1,800 abstracts have been submitted and more than 4,000 persons have participated. Seventeen satellite symposia were available covering the latest therapeutical and diagnostic acquisitions.

The Congress was opened by the President of the EFNS, Jacques L. De Reuck and the first course was entitled "How do I examine...?". Professors Gil-Nagel, Quinn and Clanet spoke about the diagnostic in epilepsy patients, in patients with suspected Parkinsonism and patients with a multiple sclerosis, respectively.

On Sunday 24, we emphasize a session about Neuro-estimulation for epilepsy. According to Professor Wadman, deep brain stimulation is a successful therapy for epilepsy patients. However, as it is not known what the underlying fundamental mechanism is, it is unclear where the best location for stimulation is. It is needed distinguish between acute intervention in ongoing, just started, or about to start epileptic seizure and an approach where the main goal is to chronically decrease excitability and so reduce the likelihood of the occurrence of a seizure. Another interesting aspect is the applicability of closed-loop strategies where the level of stimulation is controlled by the state of the brain. Professor Wadman thinks that in epilepsy there are reasons to assume that continuous stimulation is not necessarily the best approach.

On Sunday in the morning, Professor Barbro B. Johansson explained the fascinating matter of the brain plasticity and stroke rehabilitation. According to Professor Johansson, training in specific activities of daily living, and starting within the first week or weeks after stroke are important key factors in stroke rehabilitation. The healthy brain has a large capacity for automatic simultaneous processing and integration of sensory information. Cortical lesions interrupt networks that combine different regions, and the capacity for automatic processing of incoming stimuli is reduced. Cortical sensory and motor representation of the hand exerts inhibitory influences on the motor opposite cortex in healthy individuals. Based on the observation of an abnormally high inhibition from the intact side in patients with cerebral infarcts, has been hypothesized that this abnormality might adversely influence motor recovery.

Applicability of neuroimagen techniques has been a topic very important in this Congress. On Monday 25, Professor Berg presented imaging techniques of basal ganglia disorders. However, SPECT or PET techniques are limited because they do not discern between idiopathic Parkinson´s disease and atypical Parkinsonian syndrom. Special MRI techniques, like diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and volumetry of the respective areas need to be applied.

On Tuesday 26, there was a session about Cognitive Neuropsychology. It was very interesting a presentation by Professor Khateb and collaboratives about the dissociation between the semantic relation and language effects in the bilingual brain. It is well known that behavioral studies report semantic priming effects as faster responses to target words preceded by semantically related primes in comparison to semantically unrelated ones. In bilinguals, this effect is observed together with a language effect, which is faster in responses to targets in the first than in the second language. They have investigated the event-related potential correlates of the semantic and language effects in bilinguals, concluding the dissociation between language and semantic relation effects in time and space.

For the author of this chronicle, the Congress finished with a session about History of Neurology. Professor Iniesta spoke about History of Medicine in Spain and the figure of Pedro Laín Entralgo. In a very beautiful presentation, Professor De Felipe stressed the contribution of Santiago Ramón y Cajal to the study of the cerebral cortex. One of Cajal´s favourite topics was the study of the cerebral cortex and, especially, "the butterflies of the soul", the term he adopted as a metaphor for the pyramidal cells. Dendritic spines were first described by Cajal in 1888. Two years later, he also described the presence of spines on pyramidal neurond in the cerebral cortex of mammals, suggesting that these structures were points of contact with axon terminals. Others were sceptical and considered the spines as artifacts produced by the Golgi method. In fact, the postsynaptic nature of spines could not be demonstrated until the advent of electron microscopy in the 1950s. Many recent studies have shown that the dendritic spines of pyramidal neurons are highly plastic structures that appear to be very important elements in cognition.

The session was closed with a presentation of a video by Professor Alberto Portera. Professor Portera emphasized a fundamental question for this blog: the correlation between neuronal functioning and social coevolution.

This Congress has been made possible through the generous contribution of many people. We acknowledge, especially, the organizing effort of the Professors Antonio Gil-Nagel (Hospital Rúber Internacional-Madrid) and Jesús Porta-Etessam (Hospital Clínico-Madrid).