[Biomedical-cybernetics] Complexity and creativity at INSC, Palermo, March 15-17

[Guastello, Stephen]

Dear Colleagues -- The excitement continues to build...

We are honored to announce our featured speaker
F. Tito Arecchi, University of Firenze

who will present
"Dynamics of Consciousness: Complexity and Creativity"

at the
4th International Nonlinear Science Conference,
Palermo, Sicily, March 15-17, 2010

The cognitive problem is how a given sensorial input elicits a 
decision. Since neurons undergo  deterministic chaos , information is 
lost in course of time. Control of chaos reduces such a loss rate by 
adding extra degrees of freedom. This addition is a change of code; 
such a re-coding  occurs on two time scales, namely, (A) the 
cognitive one (lasting up to 3 sec), within which the brain reaches a 
collective state associated with a perception, and (B), the 
linguistic one (beyond 3 sec), whereby memory retrieves different (A) 
units and compares them. In (A) the neurons are mutually coupled in 
large networks ; collective synchronization of neuron arrays elicit 
decisions. In (B), different (A) slots are compared after retrieval 
from memory. This requires  a subject conscious of him/herself as 
well as of the pieces of the stream to be correlated. While in (A) 
the neuron synchronization is described in dynamical terms, in B) the 
slot comparison is formalized by an inverse Bayes rule.  Distinction 
of (A), that we have in common with animals, from  (B) where we 
formulate attributions of truth, recovers the fundamental 
philosophical difference between apprehension and judgement.


F. Tito Arecchi is Professor Emeritus at Univeristy of Firenze. He is 
the author of seven books and over 400 journal articles on topics 
that include: Cooperative effects in quantum optics, photon 
statistics and laser fluctuations, deterministic chaos in optics, 
pattern formation in extended media,

complex phenomena and cognitive processes. His most recent book is 
entitled, Cooperation, Complexity and Creativity (publ. S.Di Renzo, 
Roma, 2007).



The abstracts to the INSC conference will be indexed in PsycEXTRA, 
produced by the American Psychological Association. A post-conference 
edition of the INSC abstracts will be available in PDF on the SCTPLS 
web site along with editions of abstracts from earlier SCTPLS/INSC 
conferences.



Conference Committee:
Prof. Gaetano L. Aiello, University of Palermo, Chair: 
aiello at difter.unipa.it<mailto:aiello at difter.unipa.it> or 
tanoaiello at unipa.it<mailto:tanoaiello at unipa.it>
Dick Thompson, Ph.D., SCTPLS President
Prof. Stephen J. Guastello, Marquette University
Dr. Dimitrios Stamovlasis, Aristotle University

Sponsored by:
The Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences

and  University of Palermo


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