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Philosophical Transactions. Series A,... Jul 2023General mathematical reasoning is computationally undecidable, but humans routinely solve new problems. Moreover, discoveries developed over centuries are taught to...
General mathematical reasoning is computationally undecidable, but humans routinely solve new problems. Moreover, discoveries developed over centuries are taught to subsequent generations quickly. What structure enables this, and how might that inform automated mathematical reasoning? We posit that central to both puzzles is the structure of procedural abstractions underlying mathematics. We explore this idea in a case study on five sections of beginning algebra on the Khan Academy platform. To define a computational foundation, we introduce Peano, a theorem-proving environment where the set of valid actions at any point is finite. We use Peano to formalize introductory algebra problems and axioms, obtaining well-defined search problems. We observe existing reinforcement learning methods for symbolic reasoning to be insufficient to solve harder problems. Adding the ability to induce reusable abstractions ('tactics') from its own solutions allows an agent to make steady progress, solving all problems. Furthermore, these abstractions induce an order to the problems, seen at random during training. The recovered order has significant agreement with the expert-designed Khan Academy curriculum, and second-generation agents trained on the recovered curriculum learn significantly faster. These results illustrate the synergistic role of abstractions and curricula in the cultural transmission of mathematics. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Cognitive artificial intelligence'.
PubMed: 37271179
DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2022.0044 -
Journal of Experimental Psychology.... Mar 2020In their seminal study of chess expertise, Simon and Chase (Chase & Simon, 1973; Simon & Chase, 1973) proposed that perceptual learning was a necessary component of...
In their seminal study of chess expertise, Simon and Chase (Chase & Simon, 1973; Simon & Chase, 1973) proposed that perceptual learning was a necessary component of skill acquisition. In their view, acquisition of skill results from the strategic use of learning at multiple levels to adaptively overcome inherent limitations. The knowledge acquired by way of perceptual learning that supported increasingly sophisticated perceptual discrimination processes, according to Simon and Chase, was referred to as a chunk. The chunk was conceptualized as a meaningful complex set of features that abstracted the notion of a perceptual object. Simon and Chase further suggested that meaningful combinations of chunks could be combined to form configurations (Simon & Chase, 1973, p. 399). The present study addresses this idea by framing the notion of a chunk in terms of two formal metatheories, one that addresses representation (Ashby & Townsend, 1986) and one that addresses processing (Townsend & Nozawa, 1995), and tests the prediction that perceptual learning produces organized perceptual objects (chunks). Two experiments combine behavioral and electroencephelographic (EEG) measures to show that perceptual learning produces (a) a shift from perceptual independence and separability to violations of separability, and (b) shifts from limited-capacity serial processing to supercapacity parallel processing. The evidence from both experiments is strong and consistent: perceptual learning does indeed induce chunking-the production of perceptual objects, and the foundation of perceptual expertise. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Adult; Contrast Sensitivity; Electroencephalography; Female; Humans; Learning; Male; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Psychomotor Performance; Young Adult
PubMed: 31219302
DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000735 -
Biotech (Basel (Switzerland)) Jul 2022DNA sequencers output a large set of very long biological data strings that we should persist in databases rather than basic text file systems. Many different data...
DNA sequencers output a large set of very long biological data strings that we should persist in databases rather than basic text file systems. Many different data models and database management systems (DBMS) may deal with both storage and efficiency issues regarding genomic datasets. Specifically, there is a need for handling strings with variable sizes while keeping their biological meaning. Relational database management systems (RDBMS) provide several data types that could be further explored for the genomics context. Besides, they enforce integrity, consistency, and enable good abstractions for more conventional data. We propose the relational text data type to represent and manipulate biological sequences and their derivatives. We present a logical schema for representing the core biological information, which may be inferred from a given biological conceptual data schema and the corresponding function manipulations. We implement and evaluate these stored functions into an actual RDBMS for both efficacy and efficiency. We show that it is possible to enforce basic and complex requirements for the genomic domain. We claim that the well-established relational text data type in RDBMS may appropriately handle the representation and persistency of biological sequences. We base our approach on the idea of domain-specific abstract data types that can store data with semantically defined functions while hiding those details from non-technical end-users.
PubMed: 35997339
DOI: 10.3390/biotech11030031 -
Experimental Physiology Sep 2021What is the topic of this review? This Lecture covers the role of caudal brainstem GLP1 neurons in acute and chronic stress responses. What advances does it highlight?... (Review)
Review
NEW FINDINGS
What is the topic of this review? This Lecture covers the role of caudal brainstem GLP1 neurons in acute and chronic stress responses. What advances does it highlight? This Lecture focuses on the recent advances in our understanding of GLP1 neurons and their physiological role in many aspects of stress. Particular focus is given to the recent elucidation, in part, of the anatomical basis for recruitment of GLP1 neurons in response to acute stress. Finally, the potential, but at this time somewhat speculative, role of GLP1 neurons in chronic stress is discussed.
ABSTRACT
The brain responds rapidly to stressful stimuli by increasing sympathetic outflow, activating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and eliciting avoidance behaviours to limit risks to safety. Stress responses are adaptive and essential but can become maladaptive when the stress is chronic, causing autonomic imbalance, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis hyper-reactivity and a state of hypervigilance. Ultimately, this contributes to the development of cardiovascular disease and affective disorders, including major depression and anxiety. Stress responses are often thought to be driven mainly by forebrain areas; however, the brainstem nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS) is ideally located to control both autonomic outflow and behaviour in response to stress. Here, I review the preclinical evidence that the NTS and its resident glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP1)-expressing neurons are prominent mediators of stress responses. This Lecture introduces the reader to the idea of good and bad stress and outlines the types of stress that engage the NTS and GLP1 neurons. I describe in particular detail the recent studies by myself and others aimed at mapping sources of synaptic inputs to GLP1 neurons and consider the implications for our understanding of the role of GLP1 neurons in stress. This is followed by a discussion of the contribution of brain GLP1 and GLP1 neurons to behavioural and physiological stress responses. The evidence reviewed highlights a potentially prominent role for GLP1 neurons in the response of the brain to acute stress and reveals important unanswered questions regarding their role in chronic stress.
Topics: Glucagon-Like Peptide 1; Hypothalamo-Hypophyseal System; Neurons; Pituitary-Adrenal System; Solitary Nucleus
PubMed: 34302307
DOI: 10.1113/EP089445 -
Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience... 2020The way in which neurons encode information remains a hotly debated topic in neuroscience. Lin and colleagues in a 2014 article in the journal demonstrate how sparse...
The way in which neurons encode information remains a hotly debated topic in neuroscience. Lin and colleagues in a 2014 article in the journal demonstrate how sparse coding in the olfactory learning and memory center of can influence learning behavior. Coding sparsity is the idea that only a small number of neurons in a network represent any given stimulus. Using neurogenetics, computational neuroscience, and cognitive approaches, they outline the discovery of an inhibitory feedback circuit responsible for differentiating the neuronal response to different odors. Manipulating this feedback circuit, they demonstrate how the sparseness in neural networks (how easily neurons are activated) can correspond to the ability to learn a sensory discrimination more easily. From a research perspective, this paper was important as it was the first causal demonstration of the role of sparseness in learning. From a teaching point of view, this paper is valuable because it is a simple but effective introduction to artificial neural network theory, where both the abstract theory and the importance of its application is apparent to those without a mathematical or computational background.
PubMed: 33880103
DOI: No ID Found -
Quarterly Journal of Experimental... Jul 2023Letter-similarity effects are elusive with common words in lexical decision experiments: and (base word: ) produce similar error rates and rejection latencies....
Letter-similarity effects are elusive with common words in lexical decision experiments: and (base word: ) produce similar error rates and rejection latencies. However, they are robust for stimuli often presented with the same appearance (e.g., misspelled logotypes such as [base word: ] produce more errors and longer latencies than ). Here, we examine whether letter-similarity effects occur in reading braille. The rationale is that braille is a writing system in which the sensory information is processed in qualitatively different ways than in visual reading: the form of the word's letters is highly stable due to the standardisation of braille and the sensing of characters is transient and somewhat serial. Hence, we hypothesised that the letter similarity effect would be sizable with misspelled common words in braille, unlike the visual modality. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a lexical decision experiment with blind adult braille readers. Pseudowords were created by replacing one letter of a word with a tactually similar or dissimilar letter in braille following a tactile similarity matrix (e.g., [ausor] vs [aucor]; baseword: [autor]). Bayesian linear mixed-effects models showed that the responses to tactually similar pseudowords were less accurate than to tactually dissimilar pseudowords-the response times (RTs) showed a parallel trend. This finding supports the idea that, when reading braille, the mapping of input information onto abstract letter representations is done through a noisy channel.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Bayes Theorem; Language; Reading; Touch; Reaction Time; Pattern Recognition, Visual
PubMed: 36382890
DOI: 10.1177/17470218221142145 -
Heliyon May 2023Basic elementary function is an important module in mathematics learning, and its abstract nature leads to an increase in learning difficulty. Computer information...
Basic elementary function is an important module in mathematics learning, and its abstract nature leads to an increase in learning difficulty. Computer information technology has created a new path for visualizing abstract content. Computer-aided teaching is an educational means that has emerged in recent years, but there are many problems that need to be solved urgently in the process of using it. This paper aims to emphasize the importance of computer in mathematics education and compare computer-aided education with other forms of teaching technology. Therefore, based on the constructivist learning theory, this paper puts forward educational strategies to make learning more enjoyable and sustainable through the computer-aided teaching and learning (CATL) system. The proposed method is an important idea to implement and apply each teacher's teaching and learning experience, thus making learning enjoyable and interactive. The CATL system is a gateway to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of the education system. Computer education is part of the curricula of schools because it is vital to every learner today. The research results from 320 students and 8 teachers in a university show that, the CATL system improves the student's performance and interaction between teacher and student. The CATL attains 94.43% of the performance rate, which is not attainable by other approaches.
PubMed: 37215919
DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e15987 -
Journal of Cognition 2022ion, one of the hallmarks of human cognition, continues to be the topic of a strong debate. The primary disagreement concerns whether or not abstract concepts can be...
ion, one of the hallmarks of human cognition, continues to be the topic of a strong debate. The primary disagreement concerns whether or not abstract concepts can be accounted for within the scope of embodied cognition. In this paper, we introduce the embodied approach to conceptual knowledge and distinguish between embodiment and grounding, where grounding is the general term for how concepts initially acquire their meaning. Referring to numerous pieces of empirical evidence, we emphasise that, ultimately, all concepts are acquired via interaction with the world via two main pathways: embodiment and social interaction. The first pathway is direct and primarily involves action/perception, interoception and emotions. The second pathway is indirect, being mediated by language in particular. Evidence from neuroscience, psychology and cognitive linguistics shows these pathways have different properties, roles in cognition and temporal profiles. Human development also places revealing constraints on how children develop the ability to reason more abstractly as they grow up. We recognize language as a crucial cognitive faculty with several roles enabling the acquisition of abstract concepts indirectly. Three detailed case studies on body-specificity hypothesis, abstract verbs and mathematics are used to argue that a compelling case has accumulated in favour of the ultimate grounding of abstract concepts in an agent's interaction with its world, primarily relying on the direct pathway. We consolidate the debate through multidisciplinary evidence for the idea that abstractness is a graded, rather than a binary property of concepts.
PubMed: 36072124
DOI: 10.5334/joc.214 -
The Egyptian Heart Journal : (EHJ) :... Dec 2021This meta-analysis aimed to assess the value of the CHEST score to facilitate population screening and detection of AF risk in millions of populations and validate risk... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
This meta-analysis aimed to assess the value of the CHEST score to facilitate population screening and detection of AF risk in millions of populations and validate risk scores and their composition and discriminatory power for identifying people at high or low risk of AF. We searched major indexing databases, including Pubmed/Medline, ISI web of science, Scopus, Embase, and Cochrane central, using ("C2HEST" OR "risk scoring system" OR "risk score") AND ("atrial fibrillation (AF)" OR "atrial flutter" OR "tachycardia, supraventricular" OR "heart atrium flutter") without any language, study region or study type restrictions between 1990 and 2021 years. Analyses were done using Meta-DiSc. The title and abstract screening were conducted by two independent investigators.
RESULTS
Totally 679 records were found through the initial search, of which ultimately, nine articles were included in the qualitative and quantitative analyses. The risk of AF accompanied every one-point increase of CHEST score (OR 1.03, 95% CI 1.01-1.05, p < 0.00001), with a high heterogeneity across studies (I = 100%). The SROC for CHEST score in the prediction of AF showed that the overall area under the curve (AUC) was 0.91 (95% CI 0.85-0.96), AUC in Asian population was 0.87 (95% CI: 0.78-0.95) versus non-Asian 0.95 (95% CI 0.91-0.99), and in general population was 0.92 (95% CI 0.85-0.99) versus those with chronic conditions 0.83 (95% CI 0.71-0.95), respectively.
CONCLUSIONS
The results of this research support the idea that this quick score has the opportunity for use as a risk assessment in patients' AF screening strategies.
PubMed: 34862957
DOI: 10.1186/s43044-021-00230-0 -
International Journal of STEM Education 2022The goal of this research was to determine students' perceived self-efficacy in science classes through involving students in expanding disciplinary core idea (DCI) and...
BACKGROUND
The goal of this research was to determine students' perceived self-efficacy in science classes through involving students in expanding disciplinary core idea (DCI) and interdisciplinary core idea (ICI) maps, as a method to visualize knowledge (utilizing mind mapping and concept mapping) to support students to integrate interdisciplinary learning. The research involved (a) creating (by science educators) eight curriculum-related, disciplinary core idea maps and two interdisciplinary core idea maps; (b) teachers guiding students in an experimental group, to make interdisciplinary connections so as to expand DCI and ICI maps in an intervention lasting a year and a half from grade 10 to 11; (c) providing feedback on students' developed DCI and ICI maps; (d) administering questionnaires seeking students' perceptions about their self-efficacy towards core ideas, both before and after the intervention and (e) interviewing science teachers (5) and selected students (25), after the intervention, about their perceptions towards the use and outcomes of their DCI and ICI maps. Besides the experimental group, a control group (no intervention) was involved.
RESULTS
Outcomes showed that the intervention (guiding students in creating disciplinary and interdisciplinary core idea maps to visualize their learning) supported students significantly in their perceived self-efficacy in the fields of Life Science and Earth Science, plus in the use of Models and Systems. In Physics and Chemistry, the students' perceived self-efficacy was not statistically significantly positive after the conducted intervention. This stemmed from disciplinary core ideas, related to Physics and Chemistry, being more abstract, with students making fewer connections and integrating less new knowledge into the related DCI and ICI maps. In the interviews, both teachers and students stated that the intervention (including expansion of DCI and ICI maps) supported students' science learning.
CONCLUSIONS
Creating and expanding disciplinary and interdisciplinary core ideas more clearly indicates students' learning, through their ability to make meaningful connections, enabling students to raise their self-efficacy in preparing for their future. The results from this research demonstrate that students' perceived self-efficacy can occur through knowledge visualization by expanding both DCI and ICI maps enabling the making of greater interdisciplinary connections.
PubMed: 36120166
DOI: 10.1186/s40594-022-00374-8