PERFECT MATHS FOR IMPERFECT MINDS: A NEUROSCIENCE INSIGHT. INTERVIEW WITH ANNA SVERDLIK

How emotions are related to abstract thought and why mathematics is incredibly accurate, how the cerebral cortex is arranged, why its possibilities are limited, and how emotions, complementing the cortex activity, allow human brain to make scientific discoveries - these questions discussed in [1] are the subject of our interview with the author, psychiatrist Anna Sverdlik. This book is Intended for anyone who is interested in the nature of abstract thought, especially mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Written in clear pedagogical style, it gives a deep insight into the physiology of abstract thought and offers some new interpretations of recent neuroscientific data.

Continuous Improvement

How do great athletes defy the power law of practice, according to which improvements in skill eventually plateau? To solve this puzzle, this book presents a theory of ‘continuous improvement’ which emphasizes the role that conscious processes play in maintaining and advancing skilled performers’ movement capacities. It argues that continuous improvement requires the use of processes such as abstract thought and bodily awareness in order to strategically alter and improve habitual movements in response to contextual demands. The book also elucidates a number of strategies that might be used to improve an athlete’s attentional control and help them switch their focus when they realize they have adopted task-irrelevant thoughts. Finally, it presents a range of methodological approaches that might be used by researchers to better understand the attentional flexibility that characterizes skilled action across training and performance contexts.

Embodied higher cognition: insights from Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of motor intentionality

This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s original account of “higher-order” cognition as fundamentally embodied and enacted. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy inspired theories that deemphasize overlaps between conceptual knowledge and motor intentionality or, on the contrary, focus exclusively on abstract thought. In contrast, this paper explores the link between Merleau-Ponty’s account of motor intentionality and his interpretations of our capacity to understand and interact productively with cultural symbolic systems. I develop my interpretation based on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of two neuropathological modifications of motor intentionality, the case of the brain-injured war veteran Schneider, and a neurological disorder known as Gerstmann’s syndrome. Building on my analysis of Schneider’s sensorimotor compensatory performances in relation to his limitations in the domains of algebra, geometry, and language usage, I demonstrate a strong continuity between the sense of embodiment and enaction at all these levels. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s interpretations, I argue that “higher-order” cognition is impaired in Schneider insofar as his injury limits his sensorimotor capacity to dynamically produce comparatively more complex differentiations of any given phenomenal structure. I then show how Merleau-Ponty develops and specifies his interpretation of Schneider’s intellectual difficulties in relation to the ambiguous role of the body, and in particular the hand, in Gerstmann’s syndrome. I explain how Merleau-Ponty defends the idea that sensorimotor and quasi-representational cognition are mutually irreducible, while maintaining that symbol-based cognition is a fundamentally enactive and embodied process.

On the Evolution of the Biological Framework for Insight

The details of abiogenesis, to date, remain a matter of debate and constitute a key mystery in science and philosophy. The prevailing scientific hypothesis implies an evolutionary process of increasing complexity on Earth starting from (self-) replicating polymers. Defining the cut-off point where life begins is another moot point beyond the scope of this article. We will instead walk through the known evolutionary steps that led from these first exceptional polymers to the vast network of living biomatter that spans our world today, focusing in particular on perception, from simple biological feedback mechanisms to the complexity that allows for abstract thought. We will then project from the well-known to the unknown to gain a glimpse into what the universe aims to accomplish with living matter, just to find that if the universe had ever planned to be comprehended, evolution still has a long way to go.

DRAWINGS TO LEARN SCIENCE: SOME REFLECTIONS

Teacher needs to reinvent himself or herself all the time, proposing activities in the classroom that enable students to build and reconstruct knowledge. Particularly in science, this knowledge is mediated through scientific models, often inaccessible to students’ understanding. For the comprehension of a chemical reaction, for example, the student is invited to imagine how the interactions between the particles would be, the atomic rearrangement, totally abstract thought and based on models, often expressed by visualizations, that need to be constantly constructed and reviewed by students. However, how to revise these abstract concepts? What strategies could be used? The answer to these questions is complex, but we would like to propose a reflection on the use of drawings, as a possibility, among so many existing ones.

On the Evolution of the Biological Framework for Insight

The details of abiogenesis to date remain a matter of debate and constitute a key mystery in science and philosophy. The prevailing scientific hypothesis implies an evolutionary process of increasing complexity on earth starting from (self-) replicating polymers. Defining the cut-off point where life begins is another moot point beyond the scope of this article. We will instead walk through the known evolutionary steps that lead from these first exceptional polymers to the vast network of living biomatter that spans our world today, focusing in particular on perception, from simple biological feedback mechanisms to the complexity that allows for abstract thought. We then will project from the well-known to the unknown to gain a glimpse on what the universe aims to accomplish with living matter, just to find that if the universe had ever planned to be comprehended, evolution still has a long way to go.

Strengthening the Foundations: An Introduction to the Role of Conceptual Metaphor Theory in Art Therapy

This paper offers an introduction to conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), rooted in the cognitive linguistics field of study, and its application to art therapy theory and practice. Utilizing comics as a form of further elaboration and explanation, this manuscript is divided into five main sections: 1) an overview of current theories of conceptual metaphor, 2) a review of metaphor in art therapy, 3) an introduction to metaphor in comics, 4) a discussion of how CMT applies to art therapy practice, and 5) an encapsulation of these ideas in comic form. CMT proposes that metaphor is one of the main ways that humans are able to have abstract thought, and argues that metaphors often 1) work from the concrete to the abstract, 2) are based in bodily experience, and 3) build on each other over time, forming interconnected conceptual systems. Simultaneously, the field of art therapy utilizes metaphor in the understanding of both the process and product of art-making. The author puts forth that the work being done in cognitive linguistics can enhance and support the work being done in art therapy, and that CMT will further our understanding of art therapy pedagogy and practice.

An Autocatalytic Network Model of Conceptual Change

Reflexively Autocatalytic Foodset-generated (RAF) networks have been used to model the origins of evolutionary processes, both biological (the origin of life) and cultural (the origin of cumulative innovation). The RAF approach tags conceptual shifts with their source, making it uniquely suited to modelling how new ideas grow out of currently available knowledge, studying order effects, and tracking conceptual trajectories within (and across) individuals. Using RAF networks, we develop a step-by-step process model of conceptual change (i.e., the process by which a child becomes an active participant in cultural evolution), focusing on childrens’ mental models of the shape of the earth. Using results from (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992), we model different trajectories from the flat earth model to the spherical earth model, as well as the impact of other factors, such as pretend play, on cognitive development. As RAFs increase in size and number, they begin to merge and form a maxRAF that bridges previously compartmentalized knowledge. The expanding maxRAF constrains and enables the scaffolding of new conceptual structure. Once most conceptual structure is subsumed by the maxRAF, the child can reliably frame new knowledge and experiences in terms of previous knowledge and experiences, and engage in recursive representational redescription, or abstract thought, at which point the conceptual network becomes a self-organizing structure. The approach distinguishes between mental representations acquired through social learning or individual learning (of existing information), and mental representations obtained through abstract thought (resulting in the generation of new information). We suggest that individual differences in reliance on these information sources culminates in different kinds of conceptual networks and concomitant learning trajectories. These differences may be amplified by differences in the proclivity to spontaneously tailor one’s mode of thought to the situation one is in by modulating the degree of divergence (versus convergence), abstractness (versus concreteness), and context-specificity. We discuss a potential role for the approach in the development of an overarching framework that integrates evolutionary and developmental approaches to cognition.