Tom Stafford

Matt Webb

Looks at the inner workings of the human brain, offering experiments that test vision, hearing perception, reasoning, memory, and emotion.

Tips & Tricks for Using Your Brain

Mind Hacks

We instinctively tell stories about our experiences, and get lost in stories told by other people. This is an essay about our story-telling minds. It is about the psychological power of stories, and about what the ability to enjoy stories tells us about the fundamental nature of mind.«I discuss psychological research into how we understand, how we make choices and moral reasoning. This research, I argue, is incomplete or misleading if we don’t recognise that moral choices require an extra step, not just of making the correct choices based on a description of the world, but of also realising that there are many possible ways to describe the world».

The Narrative Escape

Qual è il nostro rapporto con le storie? Come ce le raccontano e come le viviamo? Come ce le raccontiamo noi stessi?E quanto conta «la “storia” che ci raccontano o ci raccontiamo» nel definire le scelte che facciamo e nel guidare le decisioni che prendiamo?«È necessario descrivere il mondo per dargli un senso. Queste descrizioni diventano quindi simboli potenti»In un saggio bello e appassionante, che spazia dalla letteratura agli esperimenti scientifici, Tom Stafford ci aiuta a comprendere il nostro rapporto con le narrazioni. Quelle degli altri e quelle che ci costruiamo da soli per descrivere la nostra vita.

La fuga narrativa

Evidence that Reason Can Change Minds

For Argument's Sake

Andrew Barto

 Gianluca Baldassarre

 Marco Mirolli

Peter Redgrave

Richard Michael Ryan

The aim of this Research Topic for Frontiers in Psychology under the section of Cognitive Science and Frontiers in Neurorobotics is to present state-of-the-art research, whether theoretical, empirical, or computational investigations, on open-ended development driven by intrinsic motivations. The topic will address questions such as: How do motivations drive learning? How are complex skills built up from a foundation of simpler competencies? What are the neural and computational bases for intrinsically motivated learning? What is the contribution of intrinsic motivations to wider cognition? Autonomous development and lifelong open-ended learning are hallmarks of intelligence. Higher mammals, and especially humans, engage in activities that do not appear to directly serve the goals of survival, reproduction, or material advantage. Rather, a large part of their activity is intrinsically motivated - behavior driven by curiosity, play, interest in novel stimuli and surprising events, autonomous goal-setting, and the pleasure of acquiring new competencies. This allows the cumulative acquisition of knowledge and skills that can later be used to accomplish fitness-enhancing goals. Intrinsic motivations continue during adulthood, and in humans artistic creativity, scientific discovery, and subjective well-being owe much to them. The study of intrinsically motivated behavior has a long history in psychological and ethological research, which is now being reinvigorated by perspectives from neuroscience, artificial intelligence and computer science. For example, recent neuroscientific research is discovering how neuromodulators like dopamine and noradrenaline relate not only to extrinsic rewards but also to novel and surprising events, how brain areas such as the superior colliculus and the hippocampus are involved in the perception and processing of events, novel stimuli, and novel associations of stimuli, and how violations of predictions and expectations influence learning and motivation. Computational approaches are characterizing the space of possible reinforcement learning algorithms and their augmentation by intrinsic reinforcements of different kinds. Research in robotics and machine learning is yielding systems with increasing autonomy and capacity for self-improvement: artificial systems with motivations that are similar to those of real organisms and support prolonged autonomous learning. Computational research on intrinsic motivation is being complemented by, and closely interacting with, research that aims to build hierarchical architectures capable of acquiring, storing, and exploiting the knowledge and skills acquired through intrinsically motivated learning. Now is an important moment in the study of intrinsically motivated open-ended development, requiring contributions and integration across a large number of fields within the cognitive sciences. This Research Topic aims to contribute to this effort by welcoming papers carried out with ethological, psychological, neuroscientific and computational approaches, as well as research that cuts across disciplines and approaches.

Intrinsic motivations and open-ended development in animals, humans, and robots

TIME DREAMS. They are dreams, like any other dream. They are dreams about space and Time. They seem real, but so does life.Dreams are thoughts. You've heard it before, “I think, therefore I am.” (Rene' Descartes). But, the fact is - nobody even knows where thoughts come from.Most people believe they have free will. They believe they have a choice. They believe they act of their own volition. But, will is not an action. It is only a thought. You cannot will something to happen. You are only free to choose the thoughts in your head. And, no one knows where they come from.Life is a fantasy. No one knows what Life is or where it came from. No one knows what Time is. No one knows where Man came from or how long he's been on this planet. No one knows if their actions are truly theirs. No one knows where dreams come from. No one knows what reality is.Quexistence: The Quest for the Meaning of Existence: TIME DREAMS is a philosophical fantasy of dreams, space, Time, and love. It is the story of one man's search to find the meaning of his existence. But, how can he when nothing in this world is real? Have you ever wondered where Man came from? Did Man evolve from the apes? Was Man created by God? Perhaps Man was genetically created by the “Gods”. Perhaps these “Gods” created other creatures in their attempt to make Man. “TIME DREAMS” is a story that reaches back to the Time of Creation. Man, the most arrogant of species, has no idea what Life is or where it came from. He doesn't even know how he originated or how long he's been on this planet. So, is that important in finding meaning for your existence?Gork thinks it is. In his quest to find clues to the origin of Man, Gork discovers there may be something even more meaningful.Gork tells Angie the story of how he met the girl in his dreams, her grandmother, Amani. His Time Dreams begin as he travels to an archaeological site near the Calico Hills in California. During the drive across the desert, Gork has his first dream, a dream that takes him to another time, another world. In his dream he sees a girl, the girl of his dreams, Amani. He falls in love. It is True Love. It is Eternal Love. It is a love that has been since the beginning of creation.Gork travels through space and time, compelled to follow his dream. His dreams take him back to a time and place long forgotten. While in reality he discovers an underground cavern that holds the secret to Man's past. A secret buried in Time.

Tom Stafford

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