IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/nmncxx/v05y2009i01ns1793005709001234.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Phase Transition In Human Cognition

Author

Listed:
  • MICHAEL J. SPIVEY

    (Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, Merced, Merced, CA 95344, USA)

  • SARAH E. ANDERSON

    (Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA)

  • RICK DALE

    (Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA)

Abstract

This article attempts to build a bridge between cognitive psychology and computational neuroscience, perhaps allowing each group to understand the other's theoretical insights and sympathize with the other's methodological challenges. In briefly discussing a collection of conceptual demonstrations, neural network and dynamical system simulations, and human experimental results, we highlight the importance of the concept of phase transition to understand cognitive function. Our goal is to show that viewing cognition as a self-organizing process (involving phase transitions, criticality, and autocatalysis) affords a more natural explanation of these data over traditional approaches inspired by a sequence of linear filters (involving detection, recognition, and then response selection).

Suggested Citation

  • Michael J. Spivey & Sarah E. Anderson & Rick Dale, 2009. "The Phase Transition In Human Cognition," New Mathematics and Natural Computation (NMNC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(01), pages 197-220.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:nmncxx:v:05:y:2009:i:01:n:s1793005709001234
    DOI: 10.1142/S1793005709001234
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S1793005709001234
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S1793005709001234?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Werner, Gerhard, 2013. "Consciousness viewed in the framework of brain phase space dynamics, criticality, and the Renormalization Group," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 3-12.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:nmncxx:v:05:y:2009:i:01:n:s1793005709001234. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/nmnc/nmnc.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.