Confabulation Theory: The Mechanism of Thought

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Confabulation TheoryThe Mechanism of Thought

• Group-7

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Mental World
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What is Cognition?

• Cognition
• Understanding and trying to make sense of the
  world
• Information processing
• Development of concepts
• The mental functions, mental processes and states
  of intelligent entities with focus on
• comprehension,
• inference,
• decision-making,
• planning and
• learning etc.

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Cognition

• Cerebral Cortex
• Seat for cognition
• How is Cerebral cortex able to do what it is able
  to do?
• Fuzzy explanations
• No clear cut perspective in exact terms
• Introducing Confabulation Theory
• A discrete insight into possible mechanism of
  thought

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Confabulation Theory

• Proposed by Robert Hecht-Nielson
• All human cognition and behavior based on one
  simple, non-algorithmic procedure that has been
  named confabulation
• All aspects of cognition carried out using
• a single type of knowledge and
• a single information processing operation called
  (confabulation)

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Relevance

• Radical novel approach
• First-of-its-kind concrete model
• Issuing deeper insights into process of cognition
  
• Augmenting present
• Artificial intelligence
• knowledge discovery
• knowledge management

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Roadmap

• Cognitive World Object Representation
• Knowledge Links
• Confabulation
• The Mathematics of Cogent Confabulation
• The Origin of Behaviour
• Conclusion

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Cognitive World Object Representation

• Cerebral Cortex
• 4000 discrete, localized, disjoint patches
• Thalamocortical Module
• cortical patch and first-order thalamic zone
  uniquely paired by reciprocal axonal
  interconnection
• Module
• one attribute of an object of mental world

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Cognitive World Object Representation
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Cognitive World Object Representation

• How are these modules used?
• Make groups of 60 symbols
• Module may consist of thousands of neurons
• Symbol one possible descriptor of an attribute
• One neuron may belong to more than one symbols
• Symbols have to be permanent

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Cognitive World Object Representation
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What is Knowledge?

• Knowledge accumulates in discrete units
• Knowledge link or knowledge unit is an axonal
  linkage between source symbol and target symbol
• Source and target symbols belong to different
  modules

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Knowledge Links
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Formation of knowledge links

• Two symbols become co-active to send out signals
• Synapses are strengthened in the process of
  learning
• Permanent strengthening during sleep
• Billions of knowledge links
• Humans and animals are 'smart

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Confabulation

• One and only one information processing operation
• Localized
• Winners-take-all
• Symbol with highest total knowledge link input is
  conclusion of confabulation

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Implications of Knowledge Link

• Source symbol neurons send signals to millions of
  transponder neurons
• Only few thousand transponder neurons become
  highly excited
• 10 of the target neurons receive signals from
  multiple transponder neurons

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Implications of Knowledge Link
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Confabulation Neuron Level
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Cogency
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Cogency

• Aristotelian model An appealing model for
  cognition p(eaß?d)
• Wrong model
• Alternate model Cogency p(aß?de)
• a,ß,?,d Assumed facts
• e Conclusion

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Cogency Theorems

• Thm 1 If aß?d gt e exclusively, then
  maximization of cogency produces one and only one
  answer e
• Aristotelian logic information environment
  maximizing cogency gives logical answers

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Cogency Theorems

• Cogency calculation only in trivial situations
• Confabulation Product p(ae).p(ße).p(?e).p(de
  )
• Thm 2 p(aß?de)4
• p(aß?de)/p(ae).p(aß?de)/p(ße).
  p(aß?de)/p(?e).p(aß?de)/p(de).
  p(ae).p(ße).p(?e).p(de)
• In non-exceptional cases, p(aß?de)4Cp(ae).p
  (ße).p(?e).p(de)

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Confabulation Examples

• Some examples from test
• She could determine (whether, exactly, if, why)
• If it was not (immediately, clear, enough, true)
• Earthquake activity was centered
• For lack of a (unified, blockbuster,
  comprehensive, definitive)
• A lack of (urgency, oxygen, understanding)
• Regardless of expected outcome, length
• Automatic emergence of semantics and grammar

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Why Cogency and not Bayes Law?

• p(?)0.01 p(e)0.0001 p(aß?d?)0.01
  p(aß?de)0.2
• p(aß?de) 20 p(aß?d?)
• p(? aß?d) 5 p(eaß?d)
• Bayes Law gt ?
• Cogency gt e

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Quiz! (For those who are sleeping)

• Quickly select a next word for each of the
  following
• Company rules forbid taking
• Mickey and Minnie were
• Capitol hill observers are
• Paper is made from
• Riding the carousel was

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Why Cogency and not Bayes Law?

• Typical answers
• Naps
• Happy
• Wondering
• Wood
• Fun
• the also viable Bayes law

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Conclusion-Action Principle Origin of Behavior
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Conclusion-Action Principle Origin of Behavior

• Every time a confabulation operation on a module
  reaches a conclusion, an associated set of action
  commands are launched
• Winner of a confabulation competition employs
  skill knowledge to launch an action
• Skill knowledge, and skill learning are not parts
  of cognitive thinking

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Hindering Blocks

• Conceiving and then precisely defining a
  confabulation architecture
• Conceiving and then precisely defining the
  thought processes
• Conceiving and executing an appropriately staged
  sequence of learning opportunities

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Conclusion

• A new dimension to the mechanism of thought
• Based on Cogency (refutes Bayesian model)
• If proved correct
• Better insight into human cognition
• Will redefine the outlook towards various AI
  problems
• Radical improvement in present ML techniques

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References

• Robert Hecht-Nielson, Cogent Confabulation,
  Neural Networks Letter, 2004
• Robert Hecht-Nielson, Confabulation Theory A
  Synopsis, Institute for Neural Computation, 2005
• Robert Hecht-Nielson, The Mechanism of Thought,
  International Joint Conference on Neural
  Networks, 2006
• scholarpedia.org/confabulation

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ThanQ

• Animal cognition maximizes cogency, and in a
  non-logic environment, cogency maximization
  implements what I call the duck test." - Robert
  Hecht-Nielson
• There must be some event that triggers every
  behavioral event, and it had to be the same in
  every instance, whether we're thinking, moving,
  or whatever." - Robert Hecht-Nielson