FY2019 Annual Report

Embodied Cognitive Science Unit (ECSU)
Assistant Professor Tom FROESE

group of people on the balcony with a view of the ocean
The ECSU-Team at the start of 2020.
The ECSU-Team at the start of 2020.

Abstract

The Embodied Cognitive Science Unit (ECSU) started its existence at OIST in September 2019. There were four main activities from that time until the end of March 2020:

  1. growing the unit by recruiting excellent postdocs and technicians, and by attracting outstanding internal and external students and visiting researchers;
  2. equipping the unit with custom-built human-computer interfaces, as well as state-of-the-art physiological measurement equipment, robots, and computer workstations;
  3. developing the experimental protocols for our new lines of groundbreaking research spanning individual, dyadic, and collective interaction dynamics;
  4. initiating a new series of events that will attract the top talent of our field to visit OIST, the International Conference on Embodied Cognitive Science (ECogS).

1. The ECSU-Team

During the last financial year up to the end of March 2020, these people were members of the unit for various lengths of time:

  • Katja SANGATI, Postdoc
  • Maria GOHLKE, Technician
  • Aditi POPHALE, Rotation Ph.D. Student
  • Keerthy MENON, Rotation Ph.D. Student
  • Ivan SHPUROV, Rotation Ph.D. Student
  • Christin PUTHUR, Rotation Ph.D. Student
  • Jorge Ivan CAMPOS BRAVO, Special Research Student
  • Laura Alejandra MOJICA LOPEZ, Special Research Student
  • Susana RAMIREZ VIZCAYA, Special Research Student
  • Georgina Montserrat RESENDIZ BENHUMEA, Special Research Student
  • Raul GONZALEZ CRUZ, Special Research Student
  • Alejandro MORALES, Special Research Student
  • Carolina ARAGON, Special Research Student
  • Itzel CADENA, Special Research Student
  • Ana Lucia VALENCIA, Special Research Student
  • Yo NAKAHARA, Research Intern
  • Lorena LOBO NAVAS, Visiting Researcher
  • Manuel HERAS ESCRIBANO, Visiting Researcher
  • Kaori YAMASHIRO, Research Unit Administrator

2. Collaborations

2.1 Sensitivity to social contingency in adolescence

  • Description: The aim of this collaboration is to investigate adolescents' sensitivity to social contingency during real-time embodied social interaction, using the perceptual crossing paradigm. It is part of a more comprehensive longitudinal population study of adolescents in Belgium led by Prof. Inez MYIN-GERMEYS. The goal is to find interaction patterns that could serve as warning signals for the development of mental disorders.
  • Type of collaboration: Joint research
  • Key collaborators:
    • Prof. Inez MYIN-GERMEYS, Head of Contextual Psychiatry, KU Leuven, Belgium
    • Karlijn S.F.M. HERMANS, Contextual Psychiatry, KU Leuven, Belgium
    • Leonardo ZAPATA-FONSECA, Faculty of Medicine, UNAM, Mexico

2.2 Sensitivity to social contingency in schizophrenia

  • Description: The aim of this collaboration is to investigate sensitivity to social contingency during real-time embodied social interaction of people with schizophrenia, using the perceptual crossing paradigm to record interaction patterns. We also draw on the latest trends in philosophy of mind to advance the theory, diagnosis, and treatment of mental health problems. More specifically, the goal is to better understand the reasons why people with schizophrenia find it challenging to engage with others in social interaction.
  • Type of collaboration: Joint research
  • Researchers:
    • Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas FUCHS, Head of Department of General Psychiatry, University of Heidelberg, Germany
    • Leonardo ZAPATA-FONSECA, Faculty of Medicine, UNAM, Mexico

2.3 New approaches to the addicted mind

  • Description: The aim of this collaboration is to better understand the nature of addiction by developing a theory of the self that includes habitual interaction with the world as one of its constitutive parts. By shifting the focus from alterations in brain chemistry to this more interactive perspective, we obtain a more inclusive category of addiction. To explore these insights, we are currently organizing an international roundtable on "The Addicted Self in the Age of Information Technology: Exploring the mind’s propensity for habitual and compulsive interactions", to be held at UBC.
  • Type of collaboration: Joint research
  • Researchers:
    • Dr. Christian SCHÜTZ, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Canada
    • Susana RAMIREZ VIZCAYA, Institute of Philosophical Research, UNAM, Mexico

2.4 Investigating the neural dynamics of altered states of consciousness

  • Description: The goal of this collaboration is to better understand the effects of psychedelic substances on the human brain by adopting a complex adaptive systems perspective, which is expected to provide novel insights into their therapeutic potential. A part of this research is conducted with animals and with human participants at the National Institute of Mental Health in Prague. It also includes field work to investigate the group-level inter-personal effects of ayahuasca ceremonies conducted in the Amazon.
  • Type of collaboration: Joint research
  • Researchers:
    • Dr. Tomáš PALENICEK, National Institute of Mental Health, Czech Republic

2.5 Modeling social coordination in stateless complex societies

  • Description: The aim of this joint research is to leverage the latest insights into the emergence of order in complex adaptive systems to create a computer model of the basis of social coordination in stateless prehistoric societies. The focus is on the ancient Andes.
  • Type of collaboration: Joint research
  • Researchers:
    • Prof. Charles STANISH, Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida, USA

3. Activities and findings

Our research activities investigate the brain-body-environment basis of different kinds of mental processes at three important scales of analysis: the individual, the dyadic, and the collective. Apart from several small student-led projects, we have begun three major lines of investigation:

3.1 Agency and perception

We want to understand the role of active movement in perceptual experience. Does our bodily engagement with the tools and objects around us make a difference to how we perceive them and the wider world? If agency does make a difference, how so?

To address these questions we make use of a specialized human-computer interaction interface, the sensory substitution interface called the Enactive Torch, as well as a robot arm manipulator from Tokyo Robotics. We will record data about participants' movements, experiences, as well as about their physiological activity.

In addition, we are breaking new conceptual ground by building on the latest developments in theoretical cognitive science and philosophy of mind, which leads us to embrace, rather than to reduce, the complexities of the human mind. It also provides us with a critical perspective towards the methods and assumptions of traditional cognitive science, thereby opening new routes of scientific innovation.

3.2 Sensitivity to social interaction

We want to understand the bodily basis of intersubjectivity, that is, of the social experience of being together with another person in direct interaction. What kind of bodily interaction patterns permit other people to show up as such in our perceptual experience? What is the neural, bodily, and interactive basis of our ability to share moments of personal experience with others?

To address these questions we make use of a specialized human-computer interaction interface, the minimal virtual reality platform called the Perceptual Crossing Paradigm. We will record data in a highly comprehensive manner using a sophisticated hyperscanning setup that will enable us to keep track of pairs of participants' movements, experiences, as well as their neural and physiological activity.

3.3 Dynamics of multi-agent systems

We want to understand how the insights gained at the individual and dyadic level scale up to larger systems of interacting individuals. What kind of interpersonal interaction patterns best facilitate the emergence of a whole that is more than a sum of the individual parts? How do such interactions transform the cognitive capacities of those individuals?

We have started to explore these questions by setting up multi-agent systems both in terms of computer simulations and with physical mobile robots. Using an evolutionary robotics approach, we evaluate how the agents manage to interact in increasingly complex patterns.

4. Publications

Here we only list Froese's publications that were released with his new affiliation at OIST; for a full list of his recent publications please check this Google Scholar profile page.

4.1 Journals

  1. Hermans, K. S. F. M., Kasanova, Z., Zapata-Fonseca, L., Lafit, G., Fossion, R., Froese, T., & Myin-Germeys, I. (in press). Investigating real-time social interaction in pairs of adolescents with the perceptual crossing experiment. Behavior Research Methods.
  2. Morales, A. and Froese, T. (2020). Unsupervised learning facilitates neural coordination across the functional clusters of the C. elegans connectome. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 7: 40. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2020.00040

4.2 Books and other publications

  1. Froese, T. (in press). Temporality and affectivity in depression and schizophrenia: Commentary on Lenzo and Gallagher. In: C. Tewes and G. Stanghellini (Eds.), Time and Body: Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
  2. Froese, T. and Krueger, J. (in press). Lost in the socially extended mind: Genuine intersubjectivity and disturbed self-other demarcation in schizophrenia. In: C. Tewes and G. Stanghellini (Eds.), Time and Body: Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

4.3 Academic presentations

4.3.1 Oral conference presentations

  1. Tom Froese (2019). A network model of the emergence of stateless complex society in Southern Peru. SWARM 2019, Okinawa, Japan, November 20-22

4.3.2 Poster conference presentations

  1. Ana Lucia Valencia and Tom Froese (2019). Neural synchrony as a social coupling mechanism. SWARM 2019, Okinawa, Japan, November 20-22
  2. Alejandro E. Morales Huitron, Mario Zarco, and Tom Froese (2019). Self-optimization in biologically-inspired topologies: The case for the C. elegans connectome. SWARM 2019, Okinawa, Japan, November 20-22
  3. Ana Lucia Valencia and Tom Froese (2019). Inter-brain synchrony of neural oscillations: Implications for the social basis of consciousness. Neural Oscillation Conference 2019, Kyoto, Japan, November 7-19
  4. Ana Lucia Valencia and Tom Froese (2019). Neural synchrony as a coupling mechanism of multi-agent systems. ICSB 2019, Okinawa, Japan, November 1-5
  5. Alejandro E. Morales Huitron and Tom Froese (2019). Self-optimization in biologically-inspires topologies: The case of the C. elegans connectome. ICSB 2019, Okinawa, Japan, November 1-5

5. Media

6. Meetings and events

6.1 Seminars

  1. "Artificial Relevance"
    • Speaker: Dr. Julian Kiverstein (Amsterdam University Medical Centre)
    • Date: October 16, 2019
    • Venue: OIST Campus Lab 1
  2. "The Free Energy Principle: Challenges and Implications for Thinking about Life-Mind Continuity"
    • Speaker: Dr. Michael D. Kirchhoff (University of Wollongong)
    • Date: October 17, 2019
    • Venue: OIST Campus Lab 1
  3. “Talking Rocks: Recent Rock Art Research in Chihuahua”
    • Speaker: Dr. Emiliano Gallaga Murreieta (ENAH Chihuahua | INAH, Mexico)
    • Date: October 30, 2019
    • Venue: OIST Campus Lab 1

6.2 Conferences and workshops

  1. [Cancelled due to Coronavirus] International Conference on Embodied Cognitive Science
    • Date: March 23-26, 2020
    • Venue: OIST Seaside House
    • Speakers:
      • Louise Barrett (University of Lethbridge, Canada)
      • Randall Beer (Indiana University, USA)
      • Andy Clark (University of Sussex, UK)
      • Takashi Ikegami (University of Tokyo, Japan)
      • Charles Lenay (University of Technology of Compiègne, France)
      • J. Kevin O'Regan (Paris Descartes University, France)
      • Rolf Pfeifer (University of Zurich, Switzerland)
      • Malika Auvray (French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France)
      • Seth Bullock (University of Bristol, England)
      • Matthew Egbert (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
      • Manuel Heras Escribano (University of the Basque Country, Spain)
      • Hiroyuki Iizuka (Hokkaido University, Japan)
      • Miriam Kyselo (Technical University Berlin, Germany)
      • Lorena Lobo (Madrid Open University, Spain)
      • Sam Reiter (OIST, Japan)
      • Mog Stapleton (East China Normal University, China)
      • Shigeru Taguchi (Hokkaido University, Japan)
      • Jun Tani (OIST, Japan)
      • Steve Torrance (University of Middlesex, UK)

6.3 Public outreach

  1. "Robot Perception" booth for the OIST Science Festival 2019

7. Teaching

  1. Froese co-taught the course "Computational Methods" with Prof. Doya

8. Awards

The first place of the Fake Life Recognition Contest was awarded to Christin Puthur and Tom Froese.