Biological agents are context-dependent systems that exhibit behavioral flexibility. The internal and external information agents process, their actions, and emotions are all grounded in the context within which they are situated. However, in the field of cognitive robotics, the concept of context is far from being clear with most studies making little to no reference to it. The aim of this paper is to provide an interpretation of the notion of context and its core elements based on different studies in natural agents, and how these core contextual elements have been modeled in cognitive robotics, to introduce a new hypothesis about the interactions between these contextual elements. Here, global context is categorized as agent-related, environmental, and task-related context. The interaction of their core elements, allows agents to first select self-relevant tasks depending on their current needs, or for learning and mastering their environment through exploration. Second, to perform a task and continuously monitor its performance. Third, to abandon a task in case its execution is not going as expected. Here, the monitoring of prediction error, the difference between sensorimotor predictions and incoming sensory information, is at the core of behavioral flexibility during situated action cycles. Additionally, monitoring prediction error dynamics and its comparison with the expected reduction rate should indicate the agent its overall performance on executing the task. Sensitivity to performance evokes emotions that function as the driving element for autonomous behavior which, at the same time, depends on the processing of the interacting core elements. Taking all these into account, an interactionist model of contexts and their core elements is proposed. The model is embodied, affective, and situated, by means of the processing of the agent-related and environmental core contextual elements. Additionally, it is grounded in the processing of the task-related context and the associated situated action cycles during task execution. Finally, the model proposed here aims to guide how artificial agents should process the core contextual elements of the agent-related and environmental context to give rise to the task-related context, allowing agents to autonomously select a task, its planning, execution, and monitoring for behavioral flexibility.

Antibody light chains are composed of two domains, variable and constant, that associate with heavy chains to form functional antibodies. In a collection of Bcell diseases, an excess of light chains is produced. These light chains form various types of aggregates, amongst which are amyloid fibers. In this case a lethal multi-organ disease called light chain amyloidosis, or AL, ensues. Recombinant variable light chain domains, corresponding to proteins isolated from patients with AL, are structurally indistinguishable from those of healthy donors. Many happen to be less stable thermodynamically, leading to a hypothesis linking poor stability to amyloidogenesis. The native state will not aggregate into fibers, so an unfolded intermediate of unknown conformation has been proposed as the fiber building block. We propose that monomeric amyloidogenic Ig domains may form amyloid fibers by combining any of the following non-exclusive attributes: a) low thermodynamic stability, which favors local or global denaturation; b) low structural diversity in the conformational ensembles sampled upon denaturation, which allows for more frequent population of aggregation-prone monomers; c) sets of non-native interactions that selectively stabilize aggregationprone monomers; d) multiple viable polymerization surfaces, to maximize the probability for seeding and extension of fibers; and e) stable protofibers that can live long enough to progress to fibers. We test the relative relevance of these five contributions for a set of four light chain variable Ig domains belonging to class D6a, one of the most common in AL, by performing MD simulations under native and high temperature conditions, docking of putative unfolding intermediates, and MD of the protofibers. For the most amyloidogenic variant derived form a patient (WIL), preliminary data suggest that it uses all five attributes. Acknowledgements: computing at KanBalam (UNAM) and Centro Nacional de Supercómputo (IPICyT); funding from CONACyT 133294.

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