Eye Movement and Conversation

A comment on a review at Cognitive Daily:

This is really interesting in that it provides some evidence as to how factors relating to embodiment contribute to two agents' ability to share their intentions and engage in a shared activity. rtl, while I too love the mirror neurons, there's more to it then the activity of those cells. In general, there seems to be an elaborate coordination between two agents that incorporates salient aspects of the situated physical environment (e.g., the painting), as well as prior knowledge (the lecture in the second case). One other tremendously important factor, as hinted at in the beginning of the review, is the ability of each agent to assess the intentions of the other. If a listener is observing the speaker look at something, the listener's mirror neuron activity might predispose them to looking at the same thing, and thus give them a predictive stance on what the speaker intends, which is supported by the content of the speech. The shared attention given to the painting then, could be seen as emerging from the interaction between imitative behaviors, shared environmental cues, physical interactions, and assessments of salience in the environment. Very interesting stuff.

crooked little vein

a capsule review i wrote for some facebook app:

A highly visual and incredibly fast-paced culturefuck, a wall of graffiti based on Spider Jerusalem's venom from Transmetropolitan with craks through which seep the cultural luddisms of a megachurch pedophile. A delightful and palpable pastiche of America But beyond all the gut-wrenching scrotum-clenching moments, and the general breeziness with which one should plow through this thing, a smile at almost every (other) turn. Also, it should be noted that this book inspired the phrase "scuzz fuckling cumbag" to emerge from my language parts, and I lay the entire weight of that burden squarely on Warren Ellis, an inimitable and hilarious and hopefully immortal human being.

facebook update

Just updated my facebook profile in ways that amuse me. I need to embark on a more ambitious online exposure campaign already. I think I'm just weird (and marketable) enough to be noticed in the right ways. Pay attention dammit!

Articles of the Day

Robot Reptile "Released" Into Wild to Aid Breeding Research

Only its head moves and it makes the female mating display when it should make the male, but it would be really funny to try this with humans.



this one sucks.

Melted Keyboards and Wooden C64s

BoingBoing had a post linking to a flickr set of a wild melted keyboard resulting from arson. In a related, and intentionally driven sort of affair, a 419eater rescammed an email scammer into making elaborate wooden carvings of strange objects, such as toys and a Commodore 64. Originally read of 419eater.com in the Atlantic, though you need a subscription to read the full article...great one though.

Go Jeff, Go!

[Originally posted on Friendster Blog Mentation Station on 3.24.05 at 8:24PM, prolly from VC]

It seems that Jeff Hawkins' book, On Intelligence, and the goals he set out within it are finally making a splash.  Posts on Slashdot and BoingBoing, as well as stories in the NYT (you know, subscribe) and other outlets are reporting that Hawkins and fellow Palm entrepreneurs Donna Dubinsky and Dileep George have finally founded Numenta, which is going to attempt to implement Hawkins' theories from On Intelligence.

Last semester, I was fortunate enough to read this book with a group of Cognitive Science majors, at the behest of the all-knowing Prof. Broude, for the Cog Sci book club.  Alongside some more hearty works, such as William Uttal's The New Phrenology (recommended to destroy your hopes of localizing brain processes) and Lakoff & Johnson's Philosophy in the Flesh (recommended to destroy your love affair with just about all philosophy post-Aristotle), Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens (just plain recommended), On Intelligence was a bit of a breeze to read (thanks in part, no doubt, to bestseller-maker Sandra Blakeslee).  But it did set out a fairly radical approach to understanding cortical function and how it underlies intelligent behavior.  Hawkins' theories, I believe, fit in as the next step from the work of Joaquin Fuster, Gerald Edelman, Vernon Mountcastle, and some others.  They all emphasize the distributed, network nature of cortical processing, the role of feedback, and the importance of memory as a key cortical process.  In my humble opinion, the work of these guys pretty much represents the future of brain research, and, as Hawkins is showing, perhaps the future of AI as well.

Endless Grand Central

[originally published on 3.19.05, 4:43PM, from GCT]

So, nobody tell the MTA that there is free wireless in GCT. Even though I just told you. By tracks 114 and 113 in the food court. Awesome.

A note to my drug-induced (read the post) comments yesterday. I've cheated, and I've been reading Damasio's Looking for Spinoza rather than the Gary Marcus book, which it turns out is deeply related to Gladwell's latest (Gladwell cites Damasio and talks about Descartes' Error a fair bit, and Damasio uses the work of Ekman, who Gladwell tipped me off to initially). Anyway, like any good cognitive scientist, Damasio manages to weave drugs into the discussion of feelings, emotion, and the brain. And what should he cite as the best resource on drug experiences? Why, Erowid, of course.

This, along with Dennett's extended rant on hallucinogens at the beginning of Consciousness Explained, as well as my own, ahem, experiences simply strengthens my claim that, like the buzz-driven computer science of the 60's and 70's, cognitive science is the domain of drugged up and/or semi-psychotic intellectuals with too much or too vivd mental imagery... Well, this is mostly conjecture, although this article tosses in a number of shady references, such as how Timothy Leary's daughter took up programming (before she shot her boyfriend and hung herself in jail...hmmm).

But some might take issue with this idea, so I'll just limit the extent of that claim to myself and, oh, nearly every cognitive science student I've known at my darling home institution. Although, cog sci, drugs, and mental illness do not always fall in the same boat, as everyone at my home institution would thus qualify to study the mind; however, there may be a case for describing all humans as cognitive scientists. But my train is leaving in 9 minutes, so no time to defend the validity of that particular radical claim.