Neuroframes: A Neuro-Cognitive Model of Situated Conceptualization

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Gerhard Schurz
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2005 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 13165901

• Final Report Year: 2013

Final Report Abstract

The first and main goal of project B2 was to develop a biologically plausible model for the cortical realization of frames so that frames may justly be regarded as a plausible model for conceptual decomposition also from a neurobiologically informed point of view. The research on this question has resulted in the theory of neuro-frames (Werning & Maye, 2007; Petersen & Werning, 2007). The theory of neuro-frames holds that (i) substance concepts are decomposable into less complex concepts, that (ii) the decompositional structure of a substance concept can be rendered by a recursive attribute-value structure, i.e., a frame, (iii) the neural realization of a substance concept is distributed over assemblies of neurons and meta-assemblies thereof, that (iv) those neurons pertain to neural maps for various attributes in many afferent and efferent regions of cortex, and that (v) an appropriate mechanism of binding together the distributed information into the neural realization of the substance concept is the mechanism of neural synchronization. A second goal of project B2 in its second phase was the analysis of the situatedness of conceptual representations in sensor-motor neuronal activity. Here the problem arises how different sensorial and/or motorial qualities that can be represented and processed in distinct regions of the cortex, although they are part of the representation of one and the same object. A prominent solution postulates oscillatory neural synchronization as a mechanism of binding; this solution could be experimentally supported in this project. Work on thee two aims were performed by Dr. Markus Werning, who left the project midth of 2009 was offered and accepted a Professorship of Language and Cognition and the University of Bochum. The remainder part of the project was carried through by other postdoc researchers, in particular by Michela Tacca. The aim of here research was closely related to that of Markus Werning. She investigated the question whether visual perception and cognition have different structural properties and content, and given that those representations are processed in independent modular systems, how perceptual representations are translated into cognitive representations? She developed an extensive argument, supported by experiments, demonstrating that the spatial structure of visual representations does satisfy the requirement of systematicity and, thus, has similar properties higher forms of cognition such as verbal cognition.

Publications

• Semantic Holism and (Non-)Compositionality of Scientific Theories. In: M. Werning et al. (Hg.), The Compositionality of Meaning and Content. Vol.I: Foundational Issues. 2005, pp. 271-284.
  Schurz, G.
  
• The temporal dimension of thought: Cortical foundations of predicative representation. Synthese, Vol. 146. 2005, Issue 1/2, pp. 203–224.
  Werning, M.
  
• Human Conditional Reasoning Explained by Non-Monotonicity and Probability: An Evolutionary Account", in: Vosniadou, S. et al. (eds.), Proceedings of EuroCogSci07. The European Cognitive Science Conference 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., New York, 2007, pp. 628-633.
  Schurz, G.
  
• Minds, persons, and space: An fMRI investigation into the relational complexity of higher-order intentionality. Consciousness and Cognition, Vol. 17. 2008, Issue 2, pp. 438–450.
  Abraham, A., Werning, M., Rakoczy, H., von Cramon, D. Y., Schubotz, R. I.
  
• The "complex first" paradox - Why do semantically thick concepts so early lexicalize as nouns? Interaction Studies, Vol. 9. 2008, Issue 1, pp. 67-83.
  Werning, M.
  
• Reliable Knowledge and Social Epistemology.: Essays on the Philosophy of Alvin Goldman and Replies by Goldman. (Grazer Philosophische Studien) Vol. 79. 2009, 288 S.
  Schurz, G., Werning, M.
  
• The evolutionary and social preference for knowledge: How to solve Menon’s problem within reliabilism. Grazer Philosophische Studien, Vol. 79. 2009, Issue 1, pp. 137–156.
  Werning, M.
  
• Complex first? On the evolutionary and developmental priority of semantically thick words. Philosophy of Science, Vol.77. 2010, Issue 5, pp. 1096-1108.
  Werning, M.
  
• Descartes discarded? Introspective self-awareness and the problems of transparency and compositionality. Consciousness and Cognition, Vol. 19. 2010, Issue 3, pp. 751–761.
  Werning, M.
  
• Different Kinds of Pragmatic Factors Explain Failures of Defaultto-Stereotype Inferences. In: J. Haack et al. (Eds.) Proceedings of KogWis 2010: 10th Biannual Meeting of the German Society for Cognitive Science, Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2010, S. 184.
  Unterhuber, M., Schurz, G.
  
• Matching mind to world and vice versa: Functional dissociations between belief and desire mental´state processing. Social Neuroscience, Vol. 5. 2010, Issue 1, pp. 1-18.
  Abraham, A., Rakoczy, H., Werning, M., von Cramon, D. Y., Schubotz, R. I.
  
• Tweety, or Why Probabilism and even Bayesianism Need Objective and Evidential Probabilities. In: D. Dieks et al. (Eds.), Probabilities, Laws and Structures. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, Vol. 3. 2012, pp. 57–74. New York: Springer.
  Schurz, G.
  
• Prototypes and their Composition from an Evolutionary Point of View. in: Hinzen, W., Machery, E., and Werning, M. (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford 2012, pp. 530-553.
  Schurz, Gerhard
  
• Semantic Contributions to a Theory of Concepts - Preface. Journal of Semantics, Vol. 29. 2012, Issue 4, pp. 439-443.
  Horn, C., Löbner, S., Werning, M.
  
• Synesthesia, sensory-motor contingency and semantic emulation: How swimming style-color synesthesia challenges the traditional view of synesthesia. Fontiers in Psychology, Vol. 3. 2012: 279.
  Mroczko-Wąsowicz, A., Werning, M.
  
• The New Tweety Puzzle: Arguments against Monistic Bayesian Approaches in Epistemology and Cognitive Science. Synthese, Vol. 190. 2013, Issue 8, pp. 1407–1435.
  Unterhuber, M., Schurz, G.