1. A Functional Framework for Cognition
Cognitive Architectures
A Functional Framework for Cognition
Based on book Cognition, Brain and Consciousness ed. Bernard J. Baars
Janusz A. Starzyk

2. It seems that the human mind has first to construct forms independently before we can find them in things… Knowledge cannot spring from experience alone, but only from a comparison of the inventions of the intellect with observed fact.
Albert Einstein (1949)

3. Functional Framework The functional framework used combines
two classical models of cognition
Baddeley & Hitch, 1974
Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968
Yellow arrows symbolize voluntary
(top-down) and spontaneous
(bottom-up) attention.
Long-term memories, knowledge and
skills are shown in grey boxes at the bottom
Recent version of Baddeley’s Working
Memory (2002) is in the center

4. A functional framework.
Central
Executive
Working
Storage
Learning
& retrieval
Verbal
Rehearsal
Response
output
Action planning
Visuospatial
Sketchpad
Bottom up
attentional
capture
Sensory
buffers
Top-down
Voluntary
Attention
Vision
Hearing
Touch
Input
Stored memories, knowledge & skills:
Perceptual
Memory
Visual
knowledge
Autobiographical
Linguistic & Semantic
Declarative
knowledge
Habits &
Motor skills 4 4

5. Major Functions of Human Brain

6. Working Memory Working Memory Sensory buffers Central Executive
Bottom up
attentional
capture
Central
Executive
Top-down
Voluntary
Attention
Action planning
Vision
Response
output
Hearing
Working
Storage
Touch
Verbal
Rehearsal
Visuospatial
Sketchpad
Learning
& retrieval
Stored memories, knowledge & skills:
Perceptual
Memory
Autobiographical
Memory
Linguistic & Semantic
Visual
knowledge
Declarative
knowledge
Habits &
Motor skills 6 6

7. Working Memory
The middle column of boxes are components of the working memory.
The central executive is believed to be part of the prefrontal lobes and has a role similar to executive of a large company.
Deals with learning tasks,
Supervisory control over all voluntary activities
Working storage involves the medial temporal cortex and prefrontal regions.
Is dynamic, hence more vulnerable to disruption.

8. Working Memory
The executive part of Working Memory involves the prefrontal lobe.
The verbal part --- such as rehearsing words or numbers silently --- involves the speech areas of the cortex (especially the dominant hemisphere). E.g., Broca and Wernicke's areas.
The visual part --- such as visual imagery to think about how to walk from one place to another --- seems to involve visual regions. 8

9. Working Memory
Inner senses, verbal rehearsal and visuospatial sketchpad, interact with the long-term stores.
Verbal rehearsal/inner speech is for rehearsing and memorizing information, while vocal tract is inhibited.
Tied to linguistic and semantic component

10. Working Memory
Sensory systems begin as domain specific, but are interpreted as part of multimodal space.
Ability to temporarily hold visual and spatial information is referred to as Visuospatial sketchpad.
Also involves abstract and cross-modal (more than one sense) spatial information

11. Working Memory Long term store is for knowledge and practiced
expertise.
Not conscious, but interact
with active functions.
Parts of system work with
others, but can also compete.
The output components are under frontal control and are related to voluntary motor functions, control of skeletal muscles and mental functions.

12. Working Memory
Hippocampus
plays an important
role in forming
new episodic
memories
Damage to the brain, medial temporal lobe (MTL) can result in inability to move information
Cognitive functions are spared, but
Ability to encode and retrieve new experiences are lost.
Immediate memory is needed to perform all tasks.

13. Working Memory
In case of the damage to MTL there is no link from working memory to stored memories.
Subsequently these new episodes cannot be recalled.

14. Immediate Memory
Immediate memory is needed even for simple activities like
Reading.
Face recognition.
Eating food.
Tying shoes.
It involves sensory-motor coordination to do cognitive tasks.

15. Limited and Large Memory Capacity
Brain is large, but its memory capacity is limited.
Brain has billions of neurons and involves complex sensory and motor processes.
Large long-term memory (LTM).
Short-term memory (STM) is limited to 7+/-2.
Efficiency increased by chunking, i.e., condense information.
Low efficiency during multitasking, difficult to do even 2 conscious tasks.
Practice can improve efficiency.
Limited functions are associated with conscious experience and large capacity functions are generally unconscious.

16. Limited and Large Memory Capacity
Dual Task limits
In dual tasks test, as cognitive demands of one goes up, the efficiency of the other one goes down.
Novel problems require much effort, brain makes errors and tend to do them sequentially.
When skills are refined, they may be performed with less conscious effort.

17. Limited and Large Memory Capacity
Some memories are very large.
Episodic and biographical memories are estimated at 1 bln bits (Landauer, 1986).
Semantic and procedural memories are also very large.
Large language vocabulary with related ideas.

18. Measuring Working Memory
Working memory is tested by presenting a number of visual stimuli for recall
Test may involve recalling a one shown before, two slides ago, three slides ago etc..
The longer the delay the more difficult the recall.
Measured is the recall accuracy and speed.
Brain activity increases with difficult tasks.

19. The mind’s eye, ear and voice
In 4th century BC Aristotle suggested that visual images were “faint copies” of the visual sensations
Recent research confirms the he was right.
C.W. Perky (1910) showed that people confuse faint visual pictures with their own mental images.
Ganis (2004) write that “visual imagery and visual perception use the same neural machinery”.

20. The mind’s eye, ear and voice
Imagery tasks
Classic rotation stimuli
check whether two arbitrary shapes are the same or different
To answer the question subject mentally rotates one shape to match the other
Classic ‘tower’ task
Roll color ball from one pocket to another one
How to transform the upper picture to the lower one
Subjects use visual imagery but the task is different.

21. The mind’s eye, ear and voice
Most people talk to themselves
Ask a person to tell about his private monologue
Or write down an internal speech as it occurs
Dell and Sullivan (2004) showed that internal tongue-twisters create very similar errors to regular ones
Try repeating “Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’ in internal speech as quickly as possible
Did you noticed inner pronunciation errors in spite of not really using your tongue?
Inner talk is confirmed by functional brain imaging.

22. Sensory Functions A functional framework. Sensory Input Sensory
buffers
Bottom up
attentional
capture
Central
Executive
Top-down
Voluntary
Attention
Action planning
Vision
Response
output
Hearing
Working
Storage
Touch
Verbal
Rehearsal
Visuospatial
Sketchpad
Learning
& retrieval
Stored memories, knowledge & skills:
Perceptual
Memory
Autobiographical
Memory
Linguistic & Semantic
Visual
knowledge
Declarative
knowledge
Habits &
Motor skills 22 22

23. Sensory functions and sensory memory tend to be in the posterior half of cortex.
Left lateral view
(Left hemisphere)
SENSORY
Functions
Medial view
(Right hemisphere) 23 23

24. Motor and executive functions.
A functional framework.
Sensory
Input
Sensory
buffers
Bottom up
attentional
capture
Central
Executive
Top-down
Voluntary
Attention
Action planning
Vision
Response
output
Hearing
Working
Storage
Touch
Verbal
Rehearsal
Visuospatial
Sketchpad
Learning
& retrieval
Stored memories, knowledge & skills:
Perceptual
Memory
Autobiographical
Memory
Linguistic & Semantic
Visual
knowledge
Declarative
knowledge
Habits &
Motor skills 24 24

25. MOTOR Functions Motor functions and planning are frontal.
Left lateral view
(Left hemisphere)
Medial view
MOTOR
Functions
(Right hemisphere) 25 25

26. Central Executive
The prefrontal lobes play an important executive role in the brain.
They are needed for voluntary control over actions.
Prefrontal also support emotional processes and are necessary to control one’s unwanted impulses.
Stroop Color-naming task is used to test for frontal lobe damage.
Conflict between reading a word and and naming its color.
Highly practiced actions (reading) tend to be automatic, while novel and unpredictable ones tend to remain under voluntary control.
Automatic and voluntary control work hand in hand 26

27. and conscious (reportable) events.
Selective attention
and conscious (reportable) events.
A functional framework.
Sensory
Input
Sensory
buffers
Bottom up
attentional
capture
Central
Executive
Top-down
Voluntary
Attention
Action planning
Vision
Response
output
Hearing
Conscious event
Working
Storage
Touch
Verbal
Rehearsal
Visuospatial
Sketchpad
Learning
& retrieval
Stored memories, knowledge & skills:
Perceptual
Memory
Autobiographical
Memory
Linguistic & Semantic
Visual
knowledge
Declarative
knowledge
Habits &
Motor skills 27 27

28. Selective Attention and Conscious (reportable) Events
The executive attention improves our ability to perceive stimuli.
The executive regions of the prefrontal lobe shape perceptual activity in the posterior half of cortex.
Conscious events seem to mobilize frontal and parietal regions of cortex.
Voluntary actions become automatic with practice and they do not need executive control.
Brain uses combination of voluntary and spontaneous control 28

29. Executive (Voluntary) and Spontaneous Attention
Spontaneous attention to find a target on the left.
Voluntary attention to find a target on the right 29

30. Voluntary Action Control
Motor hierarchy begins with general goals
The goals are represented in the prefrontal area and proceed to supplementary and pre-motor regions which triggers intention to act
The primary cortical motor
region triggers movements
of skeletal muscles.
The brain regions activated in pushing a button with the right hand 30

31. Long term Memories A functional framework. Sensory Input Sensory
buffers
Bottom up
attentional
capture
Central
Executive
Top-down
Voluntary
Attention
Action planning
Vision
Response
output
Hearing
Working
Storage
Touch
Verbal
Rehearsal
Visuospatial
Sketchpad
Long term Memories
Learning
& retrieval
Stored memories, knowledge & skills:
Perceptual
Memory
Autobiographical
Memory
Linguistic & Semantic
Visual
knowledge
Declarative
knowledge
Habits &
Motor skills 31 31

32. Consolidation of Events into LTM 32

33. Long-term Memories
Long-term memory functions are widely distributed throughout the brain by means of long lasting connections.
Posterior half of cortex involves perceptual regions, while executive plans for future actions, engage frontal regions.
Hippocampus is involved with episodic memory, while subcortical basal ganglia and cerebellum are responsible for motor learning. 33

34. Summary We discussed broad concepts for cognitive neuroscience.
Working memory is a foundation of learning and cognition.
Immediate memory seems to depend on medial temporal lobe including two hippocampi.
Damage to this regions impairs formulation of long term memories.
The rear half of cortex is involved in sensory processing and in sensory-perceptual memory.
The front half of cortex is involved with motor and executive functions and long term memory for these processes.