Neurodynamics of Cognition and Consciousness

Higher cognition and consciousness became the objective of intensive scienti?c studiesandoftenspiriteddebatesinthe pastdecades.Thebrainhasimmenselyc- plex structure and functionality,while our understandingof its operationis yet in its infancy. Some investigators declare that higher-level cognition and consciousness are ultimately beyond the realms of human scienti?c understanding and reasoning, and research into these areas is a futile exercise. Yet, the knowledge instinct deeply rootedinhumanactivitydrivesresearcherstowardexploringthemysteriesofhuman thought. These efforts lead to the development of increasingly sophisticated sci- ti?c methods of understanding the operation of brains and the very nature of c- sciousness. The studies rely on the immense amountof experimentaldata becoming available as the result of advanced brain monitoring techniques. The experimental techniquesrequire,in turn,the developmentofnovelmethodsoftheoreticalanalysis and interpretation tools. Our work is part of these endeavors. This volume presents an in-depth overview of theoretical and experimental - proaches to cognitive dynamics and applications in designing intelligent devices. The research efforts leading to this book have started about 2 years ago when we embarked on organizing a series of special and invited sessions which took place in July 2006 at the World Congress of Computational Intelligence WCCI2006, in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. The talks covered various aspects of neurodynamics of higher-level cognitive behavior, consciousness, and modeling emotions. The main theme of this volume is the dynamics of higher cognitive functions.

This book addresses dynamical aspects of brain functions and cognition. Experimental evidence in humans and other mammalians indicates that complex neurodynamics is crucial for the emergence of higher-level cognition and consciousness. Dynamical neural systems with encoding in limit cycle and non-convergent attractors have gained increasing popularity in the past decade. The role of synchronization, desynchronization, and intermittent synchronization on cognition has been studied extensively by various authors, in particular by authors contributing to the present volume. This volume gives an overview of recent advances in this interdisciplinary field of cognitive and computer science related to dynamics of cognition, including experimental studies, dynamical modelling and interpretation of cognitive experiments, and theoretical approaches. The following topics are covered in this book: spatio-temporal dynamics of neural correlates of higher-level cognition; dynamical neural memories, including continuous and discrete approaches; mathematical and physical models of cognition; experiments on dynamical aspects of cognition; interpretation of normal and abnormal cognitive behaviours.

This volume is of great interest for researchers and graduate students working on practical and modeling aspects of cognitive dynamics. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the field, which can be used as a supplementary textbook for cognitive science and computer science and engineering graduate courses covering intelligent behavior in biological and artificial systems.