Week 1 > Video Lecture > Video 1
- Hi, everyone. Welcome to the course, the Cognitive Neuroscience Robotics. And I’m Minoru Asada, the Professor of Osaka University. I will give a lecture entitled”The Higher Cognitive Function and Language.
- The frontal lobe, mentally, it has a lot of the cognitive functions, higher cognitive functions, such as categorization, decision making, abstraction, insight, problem solving, planning, and executions.
- Among these higher cognitive functions, in this lecture, I try to focus on the language.
- At the same time, it’s a very, very important aspect of the thinking, and reasoning, and so on.
- Of course the definitions of the language depends on the context.
- The natural language is a language, as a general one.
- Actually the computer science departments, the newcomers study about the computer language, such as C, C , and so on.
- Another meaning of the symbolic that is much more important is that symbolic faculty is among the higher cognitive functions and also need to support themselves.
- So in this class, I try to reconsider the language, itself, because there are many people who suppose that the language is a language.
- So linguists discuss about what is a language and so on.
- I try to reconsider language from more different perspectives as I think about language and the brain.
- The title is Symbolic Species, the Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain.
- In this course, we just say the neuroscience, cognitive science, and robotics.
- He researchs about humans and language from the viewpoint of evolution.
- That’s our point, how to design robots who can speak the language.
- So you can see that the title of this course is neuroscience, cognitive science, and robotics.
- That’s a very, very thick book and many, many details.
- The next book is Mirrors in the Brain, How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions.
- This neuron is very, very exciting, because, for example, this neuron, the pick-up neuron is excited when the monkey observes this behavior by another monkey or another human.
- So this slide shows us many, many books, so Neuroscience and Symbolic Species and other ones.
- So to study about cognitive neuroscience and robotics you have to learn about each discipline, for example, the neuroscience, the cognitive science, and so on.
- In addition to these textbooks, there are several books to think about the cognitive neuroscience and robotics.
- He reviewed patient’s brain, and he stimulated the brain regions of the patient and gets some answers from the patient.
- So that’s very suggestive for us to design some robotic brain, like this one.
- Because usually, we humans suppose that only humans can use language.
- As you know, a non-human primate, such as the chimpanzees and the monkeys, they’re very, very close to us genetically.
- We may have some origin of the language in the behavior of these kinds of non-human primates.
- Of course, it’s very, very difficult to verify scientifically how the non-human primate can use a language.
- This is very suggestive for us to design a robot who can speak the language.
- Other books, there’s Cognitive Neuroscience of Development or Phantoms in the Brain or Emerging Mind and so on.
Week 1 > Video Lecture > Video 2
- The first one- so in this case some object and some symbol in the brain is one-to-one correspondence.
- So this is very, very simple as a meaning, and the object is a one-to-one correspondence one.
- So the top left is one of the meaning is created when the perception of the sound of the spoken word is associated with an object.
- So in this case, object, for example, on the table for example, a computer on the table, and in my brain, some symbol of the computer is a one-to-one correspondence one.
- On the other hand, the second one is both word and meaning.
- Both meaning about meaning and knowledge structure are internalizing patterns of their associative probabilities linking word to one another, and linking word and object.
- So first one is object in the scene and the word in the brain,is one-to-one correspondence.
- So he supposed that mentalese are some sort of representation that correspond to some object.
- So a little bit, some connections and a deeper structure may be included.
- These four kinds of explanation is very suggestive for us.
- So the one-to-one mapping of the world’s onto the object and vice versa is the basis for the meaning and reference.
- So that may be considered as some kind of iconic reference one.
- What’s the icon? So icon means some similarity between the sign and the object.
- There’s an icon is directly- you can imagine what it means.
- So iconic means there is some resemblance between sign and object.
- Some physical or what temporal connection between sign and object causally linked to something else, or is associated with it in space and time.
- Is some formal or merely agreed upon link, irrelative of any physical characteristics of either sign or the object.
- So there are several- three references method, iconic, indices, and symbolic one.
- So these three kinds of the references are not independent to each other, but closely related to each other.
- More correctly, these three kind of the references construct some hierarchy one.
- So you can see the bottom is a very iconic objects of reference.
- So the iconic reference you can see that one-to-one.
- The second level is that- so object level is independent.
- In our mind, our brain- so some symbol or some level corresponding to the object, may have some connections- the relationship, the temperature, a spatial relationship, and so on.
- So in the object level, the object has many connections on this level.
- As you can see that to construct the symbolic representation, or symbolic reference we need to establish first one as iconic one.
- It means that the symbolic reference is depending on the indexical reference.
- Indexical reference depends on the iconic reference.
- In case of the humans, we use the language, so symbolic reference here.
- So just we say there’s some gap between the symbolic reference and others.
- So the point is a how to construct this kind of reference representation on this one.
Week 1 > Video Lecture > Video 3
- So to learn these three kinds of differences is one of the essence of the language learning.
- What kind of subject about the learning the language? The language are far more like living organisms than like a mathematical proofs.
- So is language such a kind of subject or not? So the language are far more like living organisms than they’re like mathematical proofs.
- The language operations that are user-friendly tend to get passed to the next generation compared to those that are difficult to learn.
- So Terrence Deacon mentions that the language, usually people suppose that the children or kids should adapt with the language.
- Through the evolution process, language itself adapt to the kids.
- The language should be much easier to be passed.
- So the structure of the language is under intense selection because it must pass through the children’s minds.
- So language may have, of course, in the case of adult conversations, just seems it appears complicated.
- The language may have some several aspect.
- One of the aspect involves easy to learn for the kids, and so on.
- So he supposed that without such knowledge, we cannot learn the individual language.
- The language universal is some explanation of the theories of innate knowledge.
- There are sources of universal selection of the evolution of the language structure is that first, one, immature learning biases.
- So at the beginning, immature learning bias help the kids to learn the language gradually.
- So we human beings not only in the universal grammar, but also that we may have some universalities and so on, not only the language.
- So sometimes people suppose that we need some time to learn the language.
- For the native language, we start to learn from the beginning after they’re born.
- So we are exposed by this kind of language environment.
- The native language, we study from the beginning.
- Of course, in the junior high school, in the high school, the students learn the English, but as a second language.
- So the first language, native language and the second language, they’re different kind of learning methods.
- So ethologists have provided numerous examples of special learning patterns in very young animals.
- They learn sound of their local variant of the species’ song shortly after hatching, and appear to use this as a sort of perceptual template against which to compare and match that all the singing when they finally begin singing at their puberty.
- Based on this template, this young bird again try to learn song and modify and so on.
- So many people suppose that even for the humans, we have some critical period to study the language.
- So the typical example is the mother tongue is that we need some from the beginning to start learning the language.
- The second language can learn as a native language.
- After 12 years, so second language is learned different from the native language of learning.
- So as I mentioned earlier, the immature skill of the kids’ learning skill is helpful to learn something.
- Why? So as I mentioned, the language has a very, very complicated structure.
- So if the kids try to learn everything from the beginning, it’s so difficult.
- So “less is more” means that for the kids, it’s very, very immature skill to learn.
- From a beginning to study or to learn as a whole, very, very abstract level.
- So immature skill of the learning is very, very helpful to learn the language gradually.
- The second point is in order some competition model of how to learn the language.
- So through the learning process, this neural network learned to predict the next word, or something.
- In the language environment, we have some kind of irregularity of something.
- Even though in this neural network learning at the beginning, very, very easy sentence first.
- OK, the kids has some skill, as immature skill of the learning, is also applied to some composition model.
Week 1 > Video Lecture > Video 4
- So we human beings, evolved from animals and mammalians and primates and humans.
- So we have some different size of the brain and body.
- On the other hand, the body/brain ratio is that the small animals, a little bit larger brain compared to its body.
- So the brain size and the body size, the difference of the size means that a different world.
- OK? So how about and how does our brain grow? So this graph indicates the growing curve of the- this axis indicated the body weight.
- So the primate have nearly as twice as much brain for the body size as the other typical mammalians.
- Humans have almost three times more brain than other typical primates.
- So compared to the mammalian starting point is much less smaller body.
- In case of the humans growing and growing, and now human primate stopped growing of the brain and the composite around here.
- On the other hand, the humans are growing more and more.
- As a man is the at a prime age, the human brain/body growth curve as compared to the other species of the primates- if our body grows follows the pattern indicated by the brain growth, we would grow to be very, very large apes.
- So this indicates the same one, that this is a body weight, and the brain weight.
- So if we grow and reach to the primate standard growth curve, here.
- So our body is much, much bigger than the current stage.
- So both the human brain and the rest of the human body grows according to the expected trends for their target adult size.
- Whole body, consists of the brain here, and the body here.
- The brain growing and overlay and overlay and overlay, like from the dorsal point, from back to the front.
- The body growing and the brain growing, they’re different in design.
- So our human’s brain and the body at different designer, or that mixed up the different designer, something.
- The embryonic reduction of the body growth in primates and the brain growth prolongation in humans without extension of the body growth.
- These three very different modifications of the brain and the body growth almost certainly have significantly different implications of the brain organization and the cognitive function, and the selection of the pressure has just produced them.
Week 1 > Video Lecture > Video 5
- In Section Four, we have learned that our human brain develops different from non-human primate or mammalians.
- So where the body weight and the brain weight, the growing curve is different from other animals.
- So the cerebral cortex is roughly twice as big as predicted for many other forebrain structures, and three times as big as predicted for the brain stem, spinal cord, and the rest of the body.
- So in this figure shows some deviation of the human brain from the other, nonhuman primate.
- So I skipped that detail of the name of the genes, but roughly speaking suppose that some spinal cord here, and the evolution process of the brain.
- As a result, you can see that the brain circuit itself is the same between the human beings and non-human primates, but the difference is the size.
- So white means it’s 300% larger than a normal brain.
- So you can see is that these very dark, the black region is sort of the old brain, so the same as a non-human primate.
- On the other hand, the cerebral cortex is a new brain is much, much larger than a normal non-human primate.
- So how this kind of difference happened? So brains are not designed the way we design machines.
- In the case of the brain, the evolution means the brains using the evolution itself.
- As it matures, a brain literally adapts to its body.
- So the brain designed to develop by itself, so morphology of most body parts, as a result of the local cell-cell interaction in which signaling the molecules from the cell affects neighboring cells.
- The developmental assignment of the neural functions, different regions of the brain, in many respects, systematically determine the brain as a whole participates in designing its parts.
- OK, so this is some of the development process of the brain.
- The same principle also can be applied to our brain.
- So if we have at the beginning, over production, and then through the development process, how often I use, the system uses this part or this part or this part, and then some connections remained.
- So this is one of the aspects of some dynamic situations happened in the brain.
- Second one, this is some three typical development process of our brain and some sensors.
- Then this is original one, and the normal development process happened, and then the connection from the olfactory to the thalamus or some part of the thalamus and then some connection to the neocortex.
- So depending on the information coming from the thalamus, the neocortex can be adaptive to some brain regions.
- So this shows how our brain, our system is adaptive to the change, or some damage and so on.
- So the fundamental issue is that so if this part and this part were to fire the same time, so we suppose that this one and this one is some relationship between them.
- So sometimes they fire together and then the brain try to wire together.
- So this is a very simple learning method but this is a very, very fundamental structure of some plasticity of our brain.
- Finally I try to explain what’s happened within our brain, this mean that how our brain three times for example, the cerebral cortex is three times larger than a non-human primate brain.
- So how this happened? So regional brain and the peripheral nervous system size effects plays a major role in mammalian brain evolution.
- So in that case some brain regions expected to be to some in the brain region on supporting servicing for the visual information, is taken over by other modality.
- Which means that so our brain, so some brain regions supposed to be the visual area, is taken over by the auditory regions and other regions occupy more, much larger spaces, and therefore are much more sensitive about auditory.
- So this is something happening in our brain so where some information cut off, then the other information much more, and then occupied bigger regions.
- So the example of some general mechanisms of cell and axon displacement effects influenced by relative size changes, the different brain or peripheral neural structures.
- This is the neocortex and some thalamus and some modality equally occupied the regions.
- If some part with the information is losing, the others move and then the space is for the neocortex much larger, like this one.
- Another example is if you use your muscle much more, so practice, practice, and then one muscle happened here, and they can mean and that also were some brain region corresponding to the control that this muscle is a larger one.
Week 1 > Video Lecture > Video 6
- The section six- in section five, we have learned the very fundamental mechanisms of how our brain develops, and also the difference between the human brain development and other animals’ development.
- When the peripherally specialized input and output systems recruiting less synaptic space than would be expected in such a large brain, some other systems must stand to benefit instead. So quantitative deviation of the human cerebral cortex regional areas as a function of the size of the predict for the typical ape brain of human brain size.
- Then prefrontal cortex is a target to study about how, in this brain region, how the language capability rely on this area, OK? So again- so the human’s prefrontal cortex is roughly twice the size that would be predicted in the ape brain as big as ours and six times larger in absolute size than chimpanzee prefrontal cortex.
- So these two graphs indicate that our prefrontal cortex in the proportionally much larger and also absolutely bigger and bigger, larger, than a nonhuman primate.
- So the vocalization is very, very, very unique for the human species.
- So how to control the vocalization? For example, now I’m speaking and I’m reading some slides and something.
- I don’t know how to control my muscles to pronounce these behaviors that communicate and so on.
- The center of the vocalization the control is the midbrain.
- So this indicates the whole brain and the intersection and some spinal cord.
- There are some three sections very important to control to vocalize our vocalization or the facial muscle control and so on.
- Of course in the midbrain is a center to control our vocalization, but still not so detail is revealed yet.
- OK, so human being is very unique and very, very sophisticated technique.
- Not only human beings, but also as mammalians- as mammalians and whales and birds can vocalize.
- We have two kinds of the motor behaviors, or motor control.
- Why is the skeletal one, skeletal structure? Is that the removement? So like some reaching, grasping, and also the working, running and so on- that’s some skeletal motor control.
- On the other hand, to control the visceral one, that’s the breathing or it’s heart beating and so on.
- So in case of the birds over here, the birds, they change their visceral control to the skeleton control.
- So the more extensive human cortical projections have probably also invaded nuclei in the brain stem and the neurons in the spinal cord that even primates do not have voluntary control over- the nuclei-controlling visceral muscle systems.
- Or not only the vocalization, but the facial expressions, the tongue control, and so on and so on.
- So this is in all some mammalians and the non-human primates and humans.
- So in case of the humans, much more projection from the cortical areas- it means that more sophisticated control of the vocalization.
Week 1 > Video Lecture > Video 7
- It means that much, much more projection from prefrontal cortex to control the vocalization, and so on.
- So it mean that the prefrontal cortex is a very, very strong control to vocalize our human vocalizations.
- So what’s happened in the prefrontal cortex? So idealized depictions of the predominance of the prefrontal influence over the other brain structures are depicted around these two figures.
- So what’s happened in our human brain that first one is some relative expansion of the prefrontal cortex.
- So where the prefrontal cortex itself, it expanded larger and larger.
- So not only inside of the prefrontal cortex, but also the projection to other regions- many other regions, and so on.
- So between the prefrontal cortex and the other regions, so interconnected more complicatedly.
- You know, how the prefrontal cortex affects the other brain regions, through the inward projections and interconnectivities and its own larger areas.
- You know, this one, the prefrontal cortex is the center of the higher cognitive functions.
- What’s happened if this area is damaged? So when the prefrontal cortex areas are damaged, there are no specific sensory or motor problems.
- The prefrontal lobotomies doesn’t reduce the patient IQs.
- So as I explained, the prefrontal cortex is here, and many projection but no direct connection of the sensory vision and auditory or the motor areas.
- What’s happened if this region is damaged? So these figures indicate there are some situations if some brain regions in the prefrontal cortex is damaged.
- So this happened in case A. In case B, the brain region, here, is damaged in the prefrontal cortex.
- So there are some many holes and some holes inside the food.
- In this case, the brain region here is damaged in prefrontal cortex of this monkey.
- Second one is that experimenter put the food and a new object.
- So in these cases, the point is that not to simply memorize one issues, but also some kind of another one, related to the first one, or, more correctly, some meta cognitions, or meta memorization, or something.
- So the author’s argument is that the enlargement of the prefrontal cortex, with respect to the posterior sensory and subcortical regions, is responsible for the biased learning that enables human beings to employ the symbolic representation strategies.
- Terrence Deacon claims that the prefrontal cortex is the center of the language faculty and so on.
- In case of Williams Syndrome, they control as many, many- they use many words, the lexicons.
- So the Terrence Deacon supposed that, so the brain lesions is a typical development in case of the Williams Syndrome and autisms.
- So he mentions that in case of the Williams Syndrome, so prefrontal cortex is larger.
- So he explains that over growing of the prefrontal cortex mean that to memorize many words and so on.
- On the other hand, so autistic patients may have contrast- the smaller prefrontal cortex and larger association areas, and so on.
- In case of the autism, so with less, smaller prefrontal cortex means there’s a poor capability of the language communication itself.
- So Williams Syndrome and autism are two extreme of the language development.
- So it tells us that so where there is some brain regions, especially prefrontal cortex, is the center of the language development.
- In cases of Williams Syndrome, the prefrontal cortex are too much or too large.
- Or in case of the autism, the prefrontal cortex is reduced.
- So this tells us that language capabilities really rely on the prefrontal cortex structures.
Week 1 > Video Lecture > Video 8
- With the kids measuring skills learning is very helpful.
- Usually, people suppose that an inmature skill is disadvantage, but in the case of the language learning, “less is more.
- ” That means, less-capability is helpful to study the complicated, complex target- the language, and more.
- At the beginning, it seems slow but gradually learned more.
- “less is more” is very, very important concept of the development.
- So we have learned that some brain development of the non-human primate, and the mammalians.
- Roughly speaking, the mammalians, and the primate, they are different curves.
- Or, more correctly, primates start from the small body, or large brain, something.
- In case of the primate curves, non-human primate and the human curves.
- So humans grow more, longer, than non-human primates.
- As a result, we have very large prefrontal cortex and that prefrontal cortex is the main part of the language faculty.
- Number five, the brain as a whole participates in the designing of its parts.
- Different from any artificial machine design, the brain participate.
- So that is a competition among the neurons and the brain regions.
- If some information, some modality of information, or the one modality missed, so where the other modalities or brain regions for the other modalities try to take over.
- As a result, some displacement of the brain region happen.
- This is a very fundamental idea of how our brain change in proportion.
- The human vocalization is controlled by the prefrontal cortex, much more.
- In the case of the human vocalization, much more projection from prefrontal cortex.
- As a result, we can manipulate very, very sophisticated vocalizations.
- The prefrontal cortex is the center of the language faculty.
- Actually, number eight, much more are left for you to study beyond the lecture.
- Who can speak, who can communicate, with people beyond some difficulty to communicate with machines.
- Our main purpose is to build the design, the robots, who can not only speak, but also assist some senior people in our society.
Week 1