Brain. Conscious and Unconscious Mechanisms of Cognition, Emotions, and Language

Abstract

Conscious and unconscious brain mechanisms, including cognition, emotions and language are considered in this review. The fundamental mechanisms of cognition include interactions between bottom-up and top-down signals. The modeling of these interactions since the 1960s is briefly reviewed, analyzing the ubiquitous difficulty: incomputable combinatorial complexity (CC). Fundamental reasons for CC are related to the Gödel’s difficulties of logic, a most fundamental mathematical result of the 20th century. Many scientists still “believed” in logic because, as the review discusses, logic is related to consciousness; non-logical processes in the brain are unconscious. CC difficulty is overcome in the brain by processes “from vague-unconscious to crisp-conscious” (representations, plans, models, concepts). These processes are modeled by dynamic logic, evolving from vague and unconscious representations toward crisp and conscious thoughts. We discuss experimental proofs and relate dynamic logic to simulators of the perceptual symbol system. “From vague to crisp” explains interactions between cognition and language. Language is mostly conscious, whereas cognition is only rarely so; this clarifies much about the mind that might seem mysterious. All of the above involve emotions of a special kind, aesthetic emotions related to knowledge and to cognitive dissonances. Cognition-language-emotional mechanisms operate throughout the hierarchy of the mind and create all higher mental abilities. The review discusses cognitive functions of the beautiful, sublime, music.

Mathematical Model of Embodied Symbols: Cognition and Perceptual Symbol System

“…The DL mathematical analysis suggests that modeling the process of learning abstract concepts has to go beyond PSS analysis in [1]. In particular, we discuss the role of language in learning abstract concepts [90,93,96,99,[106][107][108][109][110][111][112] and connect it to the PSS mechanisms. The mind-brain is not a strict hierarchy, interactions across layers are present and this is some times addressed as heterarchy [18].…”

Origin of music and embodied cognition

“…This theory of drives and emotions has been extended to the knowledge instinct (KI) and aesthetic emotions (Perlovsky, 2001 , 2006 , 2007 , 2014a , b ; Perlovsky and Kozma, 2007 ; Mayorga and Perlovsky, 2008 ; Perlovsky et al, 2011 ). KI measures similarities between representations and top-down signals, or more generally between bottom-up and top-down signals.…”

“…Knowledge is stored in the brain's mental representations, which are organized in an approximate hierarchy from raw sensory percepts at the “bottom” to objects, to situations, to abstract thoughts, and to representations unifying life experience near the “top” of the mental hierarchy (Perlovsky, 2001 , 2006 ; Perlovsky et al, 2011 ). Near the bottom of the hierarchy the knowledge is embodied in direct experience.…”

Language and cognition—joint acquisition, dual hierarchy, and emotional prosody

“…Every child learns language early in life before acquiring full cognitive understanding of events and their cognitive meanings. Thus, language is learned early in life with only limited cognitive understanding of the world (Perlovsky, 2009a, 2012c). Cognitive representations of situations and abstract concepts initially exist in vague states.…”

“…Mathematical model of the dual hierarchy is described in Perlovsky (2009a, 2012c) and Perlovsky and Ilin (2010, 2012). This model explains many facts about thinking, language, and cognition, which has remained unexplainable and would be considered mysteries, if not so commonplace.…”