Social intelligence: what we need to understand

Włodzisław Duch

Department of Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland

School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Google: W. DuchSINTELNET, Warszawa 10.3.2012

What is there to learn?

• Brains ... what is in EEG? What happens in the brain?

Industry: what happens with our machines? Cognitive robotics: vision, perception, language. Bioinformatics, life sciences.

FuturICT

The FuturICT flagship proposal intends to unify hundreds of the best scientists in Europe to explore social life on earth and everything it relates to.

The FuturICT flagship proposal will produce historic breakthroughs and provide powerful new ways to manage challenges that make the modern world so difficult to predict, including the financial crisis.

A bit like Cybersyn project in Chile (1970-73) in real-time cybernetics control of economy.

DI NCU Projects:NCI

Neurocognitive Informatics –new branch of science.

• Computational creativity, insight, intuition, imagery.• Imagery agnosia, especially imagery amusia.• Neurocognitive approach to language, word games. • Medical information retrieval, analysis, visualization. • Visualization of high-D trajectories, signal analysis.• Brain stem models and consciousness in artificial systems.• Autism, ADHD, phenomics, comprehensive theory. • Infants: observation, guided development. • Integration of Humanized Interface Technologies (HIT). • Neural determinism, free will, and social consequences.

Interdisciplinary Center of Innovative Technologies

Why am I interested in this?

ICIT in construction, working - end of 2012.

Neurocognitive lab, 5 rooms, many projects requiring experiments.

Funding: national/EU grants

Understanding brain plasticity, mind states.

Brains are formed by experienceBrains are formed by experienceEach brain is unique, due to genetic and environmental factors.Neural determinism: spontaneous thought

Sporns O, Tononi G, Kötter R (2005) The human connectome: A structural description of the human brain. PLoS Comput Biol 1: 245–251

What our Self knows?What our Self knows?Northoff et.al, Self-referential processing in our brain - a meta-analysis of imaging studies on the self. Neuroimage 31, 440, 2006

CMS, Cortical Midline Structures, are all involved in the verbal, spatial, emotional and face recognition test when self and others are distinguished. These structures are rarely damaged and are in between the rest of the cortex and limbic/brain stem structures.

Proto-self: body; autobiographical: memory; social: relations.

Brain and antisocial behaviorBrain and antisocial behaviorMobbs D, Lau HC, Jones OD, Frith CD, Law, Responsibility, and the Brain. PLoS Biol 5(4): e103 (2007)

Prefrontal cortex (PFC) makes us moral and rational. Damage to PFC leads to acquired sociopathy, impulsive affective criminals. Damage to amygdala leads to poor empathy and low fear, typical of psychopathic emotionless criminals.Estimation ~25% of all imprisoned in the USA fall in these two categories, frequently due to birth complication and trauma.

Will is just another feelingWill is just another feeling

Wegner DM, The illusion of conscious will. MIT Press(2002)

We may be acting but do not realize that we are: ex: ouija board,

facilitated communication; water divination and hypnotism.

We are not acting, but think that we are: subjects may be induced to believe that they have performed some actions, or that their actions are achieving far more than they in fact are.

Conscious acts of will are never the direct causes of our actions, instead, both conscious willing and action are the effects of a common unconscious cause.

TMS stimulations: even if one side is selected 80% of times the choice is felt as free ... we could be radio controlled!

Will is just another feeling resulting from attention to the state of the pre-supplementary motor cortex (Pre-SMA).

Is consciousness causing actions?Is consciousness causing actions?Bargh (1997b) estimates: Our psychological reactions from moment to moment… are 99.44% automatic.

Dijksterhuis et al. (2005): sequential conscious thinking in comparison to the unconscious parallel processing cannot accomplish much; “strictly speaking, conscious thought does not exist”, conscious thought is merely some unconsciously processed information or brain state that wins the competition to enter awareness (highest control level).

Baumeister, R. F., Masicampo, E. J., & Vohs, K. D. Do conscious thoughts cause behavior? Annual Review of Psychology (2011).

Answer: yes, but not directly, we have no conscious control over what comes to our mind, but conscious thoughts influence mental states.

Is it good for you?Is it good for you?

R.F. Baumeister et al. Prosocial benefits of feeling free: Disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35: 260-268, 2009.

Belief in free will may foster a sense of thoughtful reflection and willingness to exert energy, promoting helpfulness and reducing aggression. Disbelief in free will may make behavior more reliant on selfish, automatic impulses and therefore less socially desirable.

• Induced disbelief in free will reduced willingness to help others.

• Chronic disbelief in free will was associated with reduced helping behavior.

• Induced disbelief in free will caused participants to act more aggressively than others.

Conclusion: belief in free will seems to promote socially desirable and harmonious behavior, contributes to feeling of empowerment.

Brain and willBrain and will

What are the options? Naive, reflexive and mechanical.

Brain exists solely for its own survival, not to understand ourselves. Only by looking from outside we can understand the brain and draw conclusions about its nature and functions.

Edward Osborne Wilson

Consciousness

Brain

Will

BehaviorGensEnvironmentStochastic eff.

Consciousness

Brain

Will

BehaviorG ES

Consciousness

Brain

Behavior

GES

Personal responsibilityPersonal responsibility• Traditional view breaks down: there is no “self”

or ghost in the machine pulling the strings. • Self is one of many processes that brain is

implementing, conscious of a small subset of brain processes. • If self is not in control then how can it be responsible? • My brain made me do it, I am not responsible? • To what degree and in what sense can we speak of free choices?

Solutions: even more responsibility?

• Whole person is responsible, not just the ego or self. • We are responsible for our actions, good intentions are not enough. • We are responsible for who we become, our own development!• The brain has to educate itself and to “know oneself” better. • We are responsible for the development of our children, setting out

examples and model roles.• Spiritual development is our moral obligation.

Educational questions

How strong is neural determinism? How strong are influences from learned behavioral patterns? Khmer Rouge children were given “leadership in torture and executions”, practicing torture on animals.

Religious conversion between different religious traditions is quite rare.

Should free choice be enforced on small babies?

From Greece to China positive and negative behavioral patterns have been provided through legends, dramas and religious stories, helping to learn virtues and values through personifications (arete, persona, bodisatwa), helping in self-regulation of behavior.

Where is the source of values for young generation? Where are their heroes, role models? Harry Potter?

“Self" without limits“Self" without limits• Decisions are made by the whole brain, not all decisions

or resolutions are consciously realized. • I can control my behavior according to my values,

but first I should make it conscious = understand myself.• Free will (compatibilist style) = conscious control of

behavior in accord with acquired beliefs and values.

Environmental relationsSocial relations

Social, big mind

I =model of

self

All processes in the brain that influence behavior

Self is a complex of brain states and relations between these states.

Boundaries of self do not make much sense, all strongly coupled processes are part of big mind.

Self-controlSelf-controlE ective self-control is highly beneficial to individuals and ffto society, but it is rather difficult to achieve.

Strong will, perseverance, can be trained as any other personality trait.

In the past this was done by physical training, competition, motivation to win social approval and prizes.

In ancient Greece the concept of paidea (preserved in encyclopedia”) meant training for liberty (freedom) and nobility (the beautiful), the sum of physical / intellectual achievement to which an individual can aspire.

Self-control ability predicts academic performance better than IQ.

Self-control requires mental energy that is limited! Without energy (blood glucose) ability to perform many adaptive behaviors is compromised: this a ects intelligent thought, e ective decision making, taking initiative. ff ff

Trait (dispositional tendency) self-control appears to have few or no downsides, but requires long training.

IDoCare: helpfor development of perfect babies!

Can we influence brain development in beneficial way?

Problem: about 5-10% of all children have a developmental disability that causes problems in their speech and language development.Identification of congenital hearing loss in USA is at 2½ years of age!

Solution: permanent monitoring of babies in the crib, stimulation, recording and analysis of their responses, providing guideline for their perceptual and cognitive development, calling an expert help if needed. Key sensors: suction response (basic method in developmental psychology), motion detectors, auditory and visual monitoring.

Potential: market for baby monitors (Sony, BT...) is billions of $; so far they only let parents to hear or see the baby and play ambient music.

IDoCare intelligent cribRevolutionary enhancement of baby monitors: intelligent crib with wireless suction, motion detector and audio/visual monitoring, plus software for early diagnostics of developmental problems.

Hardware: embedding pressure and temperature sensors in telemetric pacifier, for monitoring and feedback of baby's reactions to stimuli.Software: signal analysis and blind source separation; interpretation of baby’s responses, selection of stimuli and comments for parents. Home applications: monitoring, diagnostics, preventive actions by enhancement of perceptual discrimination by giving rewards for solving perceptual problems.

Children love to be stimulated, and IDoCare will be the first active environment that will allow them to influence what they see and hear.

Active learning may gently pressure baby’s brain to develop perceptual and cognitive skills to their full potential achieved now by very few.

Telemetric pacifier

Control unit la-la … la-ra-ra… sound sequences

Database of speech sounds A/D converter receiver

Speaker

Audiovisual device (reward)

D/A converter

Wireless communication

Non-volatile memory

Database of reward patterns

RAM

Visual top-down• Normal perception requires top-down

influences to form expectations. • What if PC/FC feedback connections to

visual/auditory areas are weak?

• This does not qualify as agnosia, but is a kind of imagery agnosia, a syndrom that has not yet been clearly identified!

How will the weak top-down connections in visual modality manifest?

Attention problems? Only if signals are very weak (ex. in poor lighting conditions) object recognition may be impaired. Other symptoms: poor visual imagination, memory for visual features, inability to draw from memory, recall and describe faces and objects, notice changes, slow in making puzzles, difficulty to see 3D magic eye pictures, perhaps more introvert? More conceptual than perceptual thinking … recognition memory may work fine.

Individual differences in learning and thinking styles are large!

Imagery Agnosia

New branch of neuropsychology: imagery agnosias. Classical agnosias ~30 major types: alexia, akinetopsia, alexithimia, many visual types: prosopagnosia, simultanagnosia, semantic agnosia , form, color … Little access to perceptual imagery in visual, auditory, tactile or gustatory mode.Without internal feedback the only way to learn about plans formed by the brain is to act and observe results: trying to play an instrument in this condition is like blindsight, maneuvering blindly in the auditory space, without the ability to imagine results of next move (hitting piano key). • Learning to play music without imagery is difficult – how far can one go?

Which key do I have to press if I have no idea how it will sound like? • Recognition memory is fine, but it is difficult to repeat or remember simple

melodies (memory-motor map). • No problem to read & improvise music, higher cognition is fine. • Conscious mental rehearsal is not possible. • Immediate feedback may help?

From Genes to Neurons

Genes => Proteins => ion channels, synapses => neuron properties, networks

=> neurodynamics => abnormal behavior!

From Neurons to Behavior

=> neuron properties, networks Þ neurodynamics => abnormal behavior! Autism, ADHD, epilepsy …

Þ Help neuroscience to ask relevant questions.

Normal-Autism

All plots for the flag word, different values of b_inc_dt parameter in the accommodation mechanism. b_inc_dt = 0.01 & b_inc_dt = 0.005b_inc_dt = time constant for increases in intracellular calcium which builds up slowly as a function of activation. http://kdobosz.wikidot.com/dyslexia-accommodation-parameters

Social intelligence QSocial intelligence QAnts (termites, bees) do not know much, but their collective behavior has sense from social point of view.M. Maeterlinck wrote about “the spirit of an anthill”.

• How can we understand ourselves, various aspects of our brain states, how to regulate our emotions.

• How social structures influence individual cognition: beliefs, taboos, morality, customs, culture … Top-down causation and emergent properties.

• How can we create desired patterns of behavior, increase motivation, from infants to neurofeedback in education.

• What is the role of imagery, how good role models serve as a reference to define goals, increase self-reflection, choose “greater good” instead of instant gratification.

• Why certain styles in music, art and literature become popular, and what do they do to our brains?

Brains & Music 22-24.05.2011! http://www.kognitywistyka.umk.pl/2011/

Exciting times are coming!

Thank you for synchronizing

your neurons and lending your ears

Google: W Duch => Papers, Talks, Photos, Music etc.