The Cognitive Body: From Dynamic Modulation to Anticipation

Abstract— Starting from the situated and embodied perspective on the study of biological cognition as a source of inspiration, this paper programmatically outlines a path towards an experimental exploration of the cognitive role of the body in artificial agents. Biological cognition is here conceived and synthetically analyzed as a broadly extended and distributed dynamic process emerging from the interplay between body, environment and nervous system. Accordingly, we first analyze a minimalist case study where the ‘body’, through a very simple non-neural internal bio-regulatory system (an ‘energy level’), acts as a self-organized dynamic action selection mechanism. It modulates the activity of the neurocontroller as appropriate to the current context. The availability of the slower non-neural internal dynamic boosts the cognitive potential of the system, constituted of simple reactive components, providing it with the ability to integrate information over time. Then we exa...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ABIALS
• Authors: Alberto Montebelli, Robert Lowe, Tom Ziemke
• Keywords: ABIALS 2008, Artificial Intelligence, Biological Cognition, Cognitive, Cognitive Potential