Cognitive Science in Bratislava, Slovakia

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Cognitive Sciencein Bratislava, Slovakia
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Roadmap of the Talk

• History of Cognitive Science in Slovakia
• Education in CogSci in Slovakia
• Research Project Opportunities

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History of CogSci in Slovakia

• origins in 1980s...
• paper Kovác L. Introduction to Cognitive
  Biology, Biologické listy 53, 1986.
• 1990s seminar Cognitive Science for students of
  AI (E. Gál)
• edition of antology of papers Gál E., Kelemen J.
  Mysel, telo, stroj (Mind body - machine), 1992.

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First interdisciplinary contacts

• Prof. Ladislav Kovác founder of cognitive
  biology (also at Konrad Lorenz Institute,
  Altenberg), biochemistry
• Prof. Vladimír Kvasnicka theoretical chemistry,
  neural and evolutionary modeling
• Ing. Egon Gál philosophy of mind
• doc. Ján Rybár cognitive psychology,
  epistemology
• Prof. Jozef Kelemen AI, multiagent systems
• Prof. Ivan ucha psychiatry
• doc. Martin Kanovský cognitive anthropology
• doc. Lubica Benuková neuroscience,
  neurogenetics (also at Univ. of Vienna)

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History of CogSci in Slovakia contd.

• annual interdisciplinary seminar Cognitive
  Sciences at the Faculty of Chemical and Food
  Technology 1998-2001.
• first Slovak monography Benuková L. et al.
  Hladanie spolocného jazyka v kognitívnych vedách
  (Quest for a Common Language in Cognitive
  Sciences), 2000.

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Annual Czech-Slovak conference Cognition and
Artificial Life

• 2001 Smolenice, SK
• 2002 Mílovy, CZ
• 2003 High Tatras, SK
• 2004 Hradec nad Moravicí, CZ
• 2005 Smolenice, SK
• 2006 Tret, CZ
• 2007 Smolenice, SK
• 2008 Prague, CZ

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Monographies

• first Slovak textbook Rybár J. et al. (eds.)
  Kognitívne vedy (Cognitive Sciences), 2002.
• Rybár et al. (eds.) Jazyk a kognícia (Language
  and Cognition), 2005.
• in preparation Mozog a mysel (Brain and Mind)
• books on related subjects

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Education in Cognitive Science

• Middle European Interdisciplinary Master
  Programme in Cognitive Science
• joint Masters Program in Cognitive Science
• Faculty of Math., Physics, and Informatics (FMFI
  UK)
• Faculty of Social and Economical Sciences (FSES
  UK)

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Education in Cognitive Science at FMFI UK

• MEiCogSci
• Cognitive Sciences 2 semester open
  whole-university lectures (foreign guests P.
  Gärdenfors, W. Haselager, I. M. Havel, J.
  Kelemen, S. Reiterer, W. van Heuven, M.
  Kovacevic, M. Mayberry, L. Ropolyi)
• related subjects of AI (NN, neurocomputing,
  knowledge representation, comp. linguisitics,
  machine learning, cogn. psychology, etc.)

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Education in Cognitive Science at FSES UK

• MEiCogSci
• associated subjects

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Department of Applied Informatics FMFI UK

• history Department of Artificial Intelligence,
  Institute of Informatics

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Structure of KAI FMFI UK

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Graphics
• Declarative Programing
• Cognitive Science Centre

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Research Areas

• cognitive modeling with focus on linguistics
• cognitive semantics
• knowledge representation and dynamic logic
  programming
• neurocomputing
• cognitive psychology, filosophy of language,
  filosophy of cognitive sciences

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Cognitive Modeling

• Topic Modeling complex systems with neural
  networks with focus on linguistics
• People Igor Farka, Mária Markoová
• Means
• small-world networks
• neural network modeling

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Cognitive Modeling contd.

• Small-world networks
• typical properties (small average path length b/w
  two nodes, high clustering), scale-free
  organization
• lexicon as a small-world network (graph whose
  nodes words, edges semantic associations b/w
  words)
• growing networks, analysis of dynamics
• Neural network modeling
• focus on recurrent self-organizing models and
  echo state networks
• representing sequences and trees - modeling
  language learning (e.g. via next-word prediction
  task)

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Cognitive Modeling contd.

• Recently published results (selected)
• I. Farkas, M. Crocker Recurrent networks and
  natural language exploiting self-organization.
  In Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of
  the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver, Canada,
  pp. 1275-1280, 2006.
• I. Farkas Self-organization as a driving force
  for dynamic patterns of activity in brain and
  mind (in Slovak). In J. Kelemen J. and V.
  Kvasnicka (Eds.) Cognition and artificial life
  VI, Trest, Czech Republic, pp. 143-148, 2006.
• P. Tino, I. Farkas, J. van Mourik Dynamics and
  Topographic Organization of Recursive
  Self-Organizing Maps. Neural Computation, 18, pp.
  2529-2567, 2006.
• M. Markosova Language as a small world network
  (in Slovak), in Language and cognition, editors
  Rybar, Kvasnicka, Farkas, Kalligram, Bratislava,
  2005, page 306

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Cognitive Semantics, Modeling of Language Origins
and Acquisition

• Topic Cognitive Semantics for Dynamic
  Environments
• Symbol Grounding Building semantic
  representations from scratch by sensory motor and
  linguistic interactions with the environment and
  community
• Interactions between language and meanings in the
  acquisition process
• Influence of the dynamics of interactions
• People Martin Takác students
• Means Multi-agent systems simulations

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Cognitive Semantics, Modeling of Language Origins
and Acquisition contd.

• Recently published results (selected)
• Takác, M. Autonomous Construction of
  Ecologically and Socially Relevant Semantics.
  Cognitive Systems Research, in press.
• Takác, M. Construction of Meanings in Living and
  Artificial Agents. In Trajkovski, G., Collins,
  S. G. (eds.) Agent-Based Societies Social and
  Cultural Interactions, IGI Global, Hershey, PA,
  in press.
• Takác, M. Categorization by Sensory-Motor
  Interaction in Artificial Agents, in Proceedings
  of the 7th International Conference on Cognitive
  Modeling, Trieste, Italy, 2006.

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Knowledge representation

• Topics
• Logic-based knowledge representation.
• Nonmonotonic reasoning.
• Logic programming.
• Dynamic logic programming.
• Belief revision.
• Description logics, ontologies, semantic web.
• Modal logics.
• People Ján efránek students

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Knowledge representation contd.

• Recently published results (selected)
• Martin Homola Dynamic Logic Programming Various
  Semantics are Equivalent on Acyclic Programs. In
  Leite, Torroni (eds.) Computational Logic in
  Multi-Agent Systems. Springer 2005.
• Jozef Siska Dynamic Logic Programming and world
  state evaluation in computer games. Proc. of the
  Workshop on Logic Programming, WLP, Vienna, 2006
  64-70
• Jan Sefranek Irrelevant updates and nonmonotonic
  assumtions. Logics in Artificla Intelligence.
  Springer 2006.
• Jan Sefranek Rethinking semantics of dynamic
  logic programming. Proc. of the Workshop on
  Nonmonotonic Reasoning, NMR 2006, Lake District,
  UK
• Jan Sefranek and Jozef Siska Irrelevant updates
  of nonmonotonic knowledge bases. Proc. of the
  European Conference on Artificial Intelligence
  (ECAI 2006)
• Jan Sefranek Nonmonotonic integrity constraints.
  10th Workshop on logic programming (WLP), Vienna
  2006
• Jan Sefranek Semantic considerations on
  rejection Proc. of NMR 2004, Whistler, BC, Canada.

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Computational Neurogenetics

• Topic
• Computational Modelling of Genes, Proteins and
  Brain Functions - the worlds first theoretical
  framework and original computational models of
  biologically plausible artificial neural networks
  that simulate neural activity of certain brain
  areas in relation to internal networks of genes
• People
• Lubica Benuková (Director of the Center for
  Neuroinformatics and Brain Study
  http//www.aut.ac.nz/research/research_institutes/
  kedri/research_centres/centre_for_neuroinformatics
  _and_brain_study/ )

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Computational Neurogenetics

• Recently published results (selected)
• Benuskova L. and Kasabov N. (2007) Computational
  Neurogenetic Modeling. Springer, New York.
• Kasabov N. and Benuskova L. (2005) Neuro-,
  genetic-, and neurogenetic information
  processing. In Handbook of Computational and
  Theoretical Nanoscience, vol X, pp. 1-38, M.
  Rieth and W. Schommers (eds), American Scientific
  Publishers, Los Angeles.
• Kasabov N. and Benuskova L. (2004) Computational
  neurogenetics. Journal of Computational and
  Theoretical Nanoscience, 1(1) 47-61.

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Cognitive Science Centre

• Topic Philosophical problems of Cognitive
  Science
• Ján Rybár (popularization of cognitive science,
  cognitive psychology, optical illusions)
• Dezider Kamhal (philosophy of language, speech
  acts theory, pragmatics, L. Wittgenstein)

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Related AI research

• Topics
• expert systems
• speech recognition and synthesis
• quantum computing
• parallel computing
• declarative programming
• robotics

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Joint Laboratoryof Mobile Robotics

• Topics teleoperated mobile robotics, autonomous
  mobile robotics, image processing, articial
  intelligence, sensor fusion, embedded systems,
  multi-agent systems, wireless communications,
  education / e-learning
• People Richard Balogh, Andy Lúcny, Pavel
  Petrovic
• www.robotika.sk

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Thank you for your attention...

• This presentation can be found at
  http//www.ii.fmph.uniba.sk/takac/ICS/zdroje/CogS
  ciBA.ppt