The body of knowledge: On the role of the living body in grounding embodied cognition

The metabolic basis of cancer-related fatigue

Although we are all familiar with the sensation of fatigue, there are still profound divergences on what it represents and its mechanisms. Fatigue can take various forms depending on the condition in which it develops. Cancer-related fatigue is considered a symptom of exhaustion that is often present at the time of diagnosis, increases in intensity during cancer therapy, and does not always recede after completion of treatment. It is usually attributed to the inflammation induced by damage-associated molecular patterns released by tumor cells during cancer progression and in response to its treatment. In this review, we argue that it is necessary to go beyond the symptoms of fatigue to understand its nature and mechanisms. We propose to consider fatigue as a psychobiological process that regulates the behavioral activities an organism engages in to satisfy its needs, according to its physical ability to do so and to the capacity of its intermediary metabolism to exploit the resources procured by these activities. This last aspect is critical as it implies that these metabolic aspects need to be considered to understand fatigue. Based on the findings we have accumulated over several years of studying fatigue in diverse murine models of cancer, we show that energy metabolism plays a key role in the development and persistence of this condition. Cancer-related fatigue is dependent on the energy requirements of the tumor and the negative impact of cancer therapy on the mitochondrial function of the host. When inflammation is present, it adds to the organism's energy expenses. The organism needs to adjust its metabolism to the different forms of cellular stress it experiences thanks to specialized communication factors known as mitokines that act locally and at a distance from the cells in which they are produced. They induce the subjective, behavioral, and metabolic components of fatigue by acting in the brain. Therefore, the targeting of mitokines and their brain receptors offers a window of opportunity to treat fatigue when it is no longer adaptive but an obstacle to the quality of life of cancer survivors.

Motor imagery therapy improved upper limb motor function in stroke patients with hemiplegia by increasing functional connectivity of sensorimotor and cognitive networks

Background

Motor imagery therapy (MIT) showed positive effects on upper limbs motor function. However, the mechanism by which MIT improves upper limb motor function is not fully understood. Therefore, our purpose was to investigate the changes in functional connectivity (FC) within and outside the sensorimotor network (SMN) induced by MIT associated with improvement in upper limb motor function in stroke patients.

Methods

A total of 26 hemiplegic stroke patients were randomly divided into MIT (n = 13) and control (n = 13) groups. Fugl-Meyer Assessment Upper Extremity Scale (FMA-UL), Modified Barthel Index (MBI) and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) were evaluated in the two groups before treatment and 4 weeks after treatment. The efficacy of MIT on motor function improvement in stroke patients with hemiplegia was evaluated by comparing the FMA-UL and MBI scores before and after treatment in the two groups. Furthermore, the FC within the SMN and between the SMN and the whole brain was measured and compared before and after different treatment methods in stroke patients. The correlation analysis between the improvement of upper limbs motor function and changes in FC within the SMN and between the SMN and the whole brain was examined.

Results

The FCs between ipsilesional primary motor cortex (M1.I) and contralateral supplementary motor area (SMA.C), M1.I and ipsilesional SMA (SMA.I), and SMA.C and contralateral dorsolateral premotor cortex (DLPM.C) significantly increased in the control group but decreased in the MIT group; while the FC between SMA.C and contralateral primary somatosensory cortex (S1.C) significantly increased in the control group but showed no significant difference in the MIT group. The FCs between M1.I and the ipsilesional hippocampal gyrus and ipsilesional middle frontal gyrus significantly decreased in the control group but increased in the MIT group; while the FC in the contralateral anterior cingulate cortex significantly increased in the MIT group but there was no significant difference in the control group. The results of the correlation analysis showed that the differences in abnormal intra-FCs within the SMN negatively correlated with the differences in FMA and MBI, and the difference in abnormal inter-FCs of the SMN positively correlated with the differences in FMA and MBI.

Conclusions

MIT can improve upper limb motor function and daily activities of stroke patients, and the improvement effect of conventional rehabilitation therapy (CRT) combined with MIT is significantly higher than that of CRT alone. CRT may improve the upper limb motor function of stroke patients with hemiplegia mainly through the functional reorganization between SMN, while MIT may mainly increase the interaction between SMN and other brain networks.

Theory of mind and executive dysfunction in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Although chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) is understood as a disease affecting the peripheral nervous system, mild cognitive dysfunction, particularly in the executive domain, has been described to form part of the condition. Here our interest lay in CIDP-related theory of mind (ToM) capacities as an aspect of social cognition relevant for many aspects of everyday life.

METHODS

Twenty-nine patients with CIDP and 23 healthy controls participated in this study. They were subjected to overview cognitive testing, different executive function (EF) tasks, as well as to the Faux Pas Recognition Task (FPRT) for assessing cognitive ToM and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) with respect to affective ToM.

RESULTS

Persons with CIDP and controls did not differ with respect to their overall cognitive state. However, in the German verbal fluency standard, the digit span forward and the digit span backward tests used as EF tasks patients performed significantly worse than controls. Further, performance was abnormally low in the FPRT, whilst the groups did not differ with respect to RMET results. The FPRT and digit span backward results correlated with each other.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients with CIDP showed deficits in cognitive ToM performance together with EF dysfunction, whilst affective ToM was preserved. Altogether, the results suggest that low cognitive ToM capacities in patients with CIDP arise as a particular aspect of disease-related executive dysfunction.

Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments

One of the most salient features of life is its capacity to handle novelty and namely to thrive and adapt to new circumstances and changes in both the environment and internal components. An understanding of this capacity is central to several fields: the evolution of form and function, the design of effective strategies for biomedicine, and the creation of novel life forms via chimeric and bioengineering technologies. Here, we review instructive examples of living organisms solving diverse problems and propose competent navigation in arbitrary spaces as an invariant for thinking about the scaling of cognition during evolution. We argue that our innate capacity to recognize agency and intelligence in unfamiliar guises lags far behind our ability to detect it in familiar behavioral contexts. The multi-scale competency of life is essential to adaptive function, potentiating evolution and providing strategies for top-down control (not micromanagement) to address complex disease and injury. We propose an observer-focused viewpoint that is agnostic about scale and implementation, illustrating how evolution pivoted similar strategies to explore and exploit metabolic, transcriptional, morphological, and finally 3D motion spaces. By generalizing the concept of behavior, we gain novel perspectives on evolution, strategies for system-level biomedical interventions, and the construction of bioengineered intelligences. This framework is a first step toward relating to intelligence in highly unfamiliar embodiments, which will be essential for progress in artificial intelligence and regenerative medicine and for thriving in a world increasingly populated by synthetic, bio-robotic, and hybrid beings.

Behavioral Ethics Ecologies of Human-Artificial Intelligence Systems

Historically, evolution of behaviors often took place in environments that changed little over millennia. By contrast, today, rapid changes to behaviors and environments come from the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and the infrastructures that facilitate its application. Behavioral ethics is concerned with how interactions between individuals and their environments can lead people to questionable decisions and dubious actions. For example, interactions between an individual’s self-regulatory resource depletion and organizational pressure to take non-ethical actions. In this paper, four fundamental questions of behavioral ecology are applied to analyze human behavioral ethics in human–AI systems. These four questions are concerned with assessing the function of behavioral traits, how behavioral traits evolve in populations, what are the mechanisms of behavioral traits, and how they can differ among different individuals. These four fundamental behavioral ecology questions are applied in analysis of human behavioral ethics in human–AI systems. This is achieved through reference to vehicle navigation systems and healthcare diagnostic systems, which are enabled by AI. Overall, the paper provides two main contributions. First, behavioral ecology analysis of behavioral ethics. Second, application of behavioral ecology questions to identify opportunities and challenges for ethical human–AI systems.

Artificial Intelligence Inheriting the Historical Crisis in Psychology: An Epistemological and Methodological Investigation of Challenges and Alternatives

By following the arguments developed by Vygotsky and employing the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) in addition to dialectical logic, this paper attempts to investigate the interaction between psychology and artificial intelligence (AI) to confront the epistemological and methodological challenges encountered in AI research. The paper proposes that AI is facing an epistemological and methodological crisis inherited from psychology based on dualist ontology. The roots of this crisis lie in the duality between rationalism and objectivism or in the mind-body rupture that has governed the production of scientific thought and the proliferation of approaches. In addition, by highlighting the sociohistorical conditions of AI, this paper investigates the historical characteristics of the shift of the crisis from psychology to AI. Additionally, we examine the epistemological and methodological roots of the main challenges encountered in AI research by noting that empiricism is the dominant tendency in the field. Empiricism gives rise to methodological and practical challenges, including challenges related to the emergence of meaning, abstraction, generalization, the emergence of symbols, concept formation, functional reflection of reality, and the emergence of higher psychological functions. Furthermore, through discussing attempts to formalize dialectical logic, the paper, based on contradiction formation, proposes a qualitative epistemological, methodological, and formal alternative by using a preliminary algorithmic model that grasps the formation of meaning as an essential ability for the qualitative reflection of reality and the emergence of other mental functions.

Minimal Developmental Computation: A Causal Network Approach to Understand Morphogenetic Pattern Formation

What information-processing strategies and general principles are sufficient to enable self-organized morphogenesis in embryogenesis and regeneration? We designed and analyzed a minimal model of self-scaling axial patterning consisting of a cellular network that develops activity patterns within implicitly set bounds. The properties of the cells are determined by internal 'genetic' networks with an architecture shared across all cells. We used machine-learning to identify models that enable this virtual mini-embryo to pattern a typical axial gradient while simultaneously sensing the set boundaries within which to develop it from homogeneous conditions-a setting that captures the essence of early embryogenesis. Interestingly, the model revealed several features (such as planar polarity and regenerative re-scaling capacity) for which it was not directly selected, showing how these common biological design principles can emerge as a consequence of simple patterning modes. A novel "causal network" analysis of the best model furthermore revealed that the originally symmetric model dynamically integrates into intercellular causal networks characterized by broken-symmetry, long-range influence and modularity, offering an interpretable macroscale-circuit-based explanation for phenotypic patterning. This work shows how computation could occur in biological development and how machine learning approaches can generate hypotheses and deepen our understanding of how featureless tissues might develop sophisticated patterns-an essential step towards predictive control of morphogenesis in regenerative medicine or synthetic bioengineering contexts. The tools developed here also have the potential to benefit machine learning via new forms of backpropagation and by leveraging the novel distributed self-representation mechanisms to improve robustness and generalization.

Inference on homeostatic belief precision

Interoception and homeostatic/allostatic control are intertwined branches of closed-loop brain-body interactions (BBI). Given their importance in mental and psychosomatic disorders, establishing computational assays of BBI represents a clinically important but methodologically challenging endeavor. This technical note presents a novel approach, derived from a generic computational model of homeostatic/allostatic control that underpins (meta)cognitive theories of affective and psychosomatic disorders. This model views homeostatic setpoints as probability distributions ("homeostatic beliefs") whose parameters determine regulatory efforts and change dynamically under allostatic predictions. In particular, changes in homeostatic belief precision, triggered by anticipated threats to homeostasis, are thought to alter cerebral regulation of bodily states. Here, we present statistical procedures for inferring homeostatic belief precision from measured bodily states and/or regulatory (action) signals. We analyze the inference problem, derive two alternative estimators of homeostatic belief precision, and apply our method to simulated data. Our proposed approach may prove useful for assessing BBI in individual subjects.

The lower threshold as a unifying principle between Code Biology and Biosemiotics

Whether we emphasize the notion of 'sign' or the notion of 'code', either way the main interest of biosemiotics and Code Biology is the same, and we argue that the idea of the lower threshold is what still unifies these two groups. Code Biology concentrates on the notion of code: living organisms are defined as code-users or code-makers, and so it may be called the 'lower coding threshold' in this case. The semiotic threshold on the other hand is a concept without a specific definition. There are many possible ways of understanding this term. In order to maintain the lower threshold as the unifying concept between Code Biology and biosemiotics, it is important to be very clear about where this threshold is located and how it is defined. We focus on establishing the lower semiotic threshold at protein biosynthesis, and we propose basing the semiotic understanding of the lowest life forms on the following criteria: arbitrariness, representation, repetition, historicity and self-replication. We also offer that this definition of the lower threshold need not include the notion of interpretation, in the hope that this newly specified common principle of the lower threshold be accepted as a way forward in the conversation between Code Biology and biosemiotics.

The Aesthetics of Encounter: A Relational-Performative Design Approach to Human-Robot Interaction

This article lays out the framework for relational-performative aesthetics in human-robot interaction, comprising a theoretical lens and design approach for critical practice-based inquiries into embodied meaning-making in human-robot interaction. I explore the centrality of aesthetics as a practice of embodied meaning-making by drawing on my arts-led, performance-based approach to human-robot encounters, as well as other artistic practices. Understanding social agency and meaning as being enacted through the situated dynamics of the interaction, I bring into focus a process of bodying-thinging; entangling and transforming subjects and objects in the encounter and rendering elastic boundaries in-between. Rather than serving to make the strange look more familiar, aesthetics here is about rendering the differences between humans and robots more relational. My notion of a relational-performative design approach—designing with bodying-thinging—proposes that we engage with human-robot encounters from the earliest stages of the robot design. This is where we begin to manifest boundaries that shape meaning-making and the potential for emergence, transformation, and connections arising from intra-bodily resonances (bodying-thinging). I argue that this relational-performative approach opens up new possibilities for how we design robots and how they socially participate in the encounter.

The Profiles of Body Image Associate With Changes in Depression Among Participants in Dance Movement Therapy Group

This mixed-methods study analyzed the body image quality of 143 patients with depression. The participants received a 20 × 75 min dance movement therapy (DMT) group treatment, sessions twice a week. Body Image Assessment (BIA) was the data collection tool, with pre-, post-, and 3-mos follow-up assessments. Pre-intervention body image quality characteristics were low energy and activity levels, discomfort, shame and disgust toward the body, tension in social interactions. On the BIA scores, a statistical method of Latent Profile Analysis was utilized to identify participant profiles in the data. The two identified profiles were participant with initial negative body image and participant with initial neutral body image. Depression symptoms were measured with BDI, and symptoms decreased for both participant profiles following the DMT intervention. The neutral profile participants had a significantly lower depression level, better energy level, and more frequently used mindfulness factors of acting aware, non-judgmentality and non-reactivity (measured with FFMQ). Findings suggest a systemic interaction between depression symptoms, body image, attachment style, activity level, and mindfulness skills. In an interactive DMT setting it is possible to address all of these factors simultaneously.

The Circularity of the Embodied Mind

From an embodied and enactive point of view, the mind-body problem has been reformulated as the relation between the lived or subject body on the one hand and the physiological or object body on the other ("body-body problem"). The aim of the paper is to explore the concept of circularity as a means of explaining the relation between the phenomenology of lived experience and the dynamics of organism-environment interactions. This concept of circularity also seems suitable for connecting enactive accounts with ecological psychology. It will be developed in a threefold way: (1) As the circular structure of embodiment, which manifests itself (a) in the homeostatic cycles between the brain and body and (b) in the sensorimotor cycles between the brain, body, and environment. This includes the interdependence of an organism's dispositions of sense-making and the affordances of the environment. (2) As the circular causality, which characterizes the relation between parts and whole within the living organism as well as within the organism-environment system. (3) As the circularity of process and structure in development and learning. Here, it will be argued that subjective experience constitutes a process of sense-making that implies (neuro-)physiological processes so as to form modified neuronal structures, which in turn enable altered future interactions. On this basis, embodied experience may ultimately be conceived as the integration of brain-body and body-environment interactions, which has a top-down, formative, or ordering effect on physiological processes. This will serve as an approach to a solution of the body-body problem.

The ANEMONE: Theoretical Foundations for UX Evaluation of Action and Intention Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction

The coexistence of robots and humans in shared physical and social spaces is expected to increase. A key enabler of high-quality interaction is a mutual understanding of each other’s actions and intentions. In this paper, we motivate and present a systematic user experience (UX) evaluation framework of action and intention recognition between humans and robots from a UX perspective, because there is an identified lack of this kind of evaluation methodology. The evaluation framework is packaged into a methodological approach called ANEMONE (action and intention recognition in human robot interaction). ANEMONE has its foundation in cultural-historical activity theory (AT) as the theoretical lens, the seven stages of action model, and user experience (UX) evaluation methodology, which together are useful in motivating and framing the work presented in this paper. The proposed methodological approach of ANEMONE provides guidance on how to measure, assess, and evaluate the mutual recognition of actions and intentions between humans and robots for investigators of UX evaluation. The paper ends with a discussion, addresses future work, and some concluding remarks.

A Radical Reassessment of the Body in Social Cognition

The main issue addressed in this paper is to provide a reassessment of the role and relevance of the body in social cognition from a radical embodied cognitive science perspective. Initially, I provide a historical introduction of the traditional account of the body in cognitive science, which I here call the cognitivist view. I then present several lines of criticism raised against the cognitivist view advanced by more embodied, enacted and situated approaches in cognitive science, and related disciplines. Next, I analyze several approaches under the umbrella of embodied social cognition. My line of argument is that some of these approaches, although pointing toward the right direction of conceiving that the social mind is not merely contained inside the head, still fail to fully acknowledge the radically embodied social mind. I argue that the failure of these accounts of embodied social cognition could be associated with so-called 'simple embodiment.' The third part of this paper focuses on elaborating an alternative characterization of the radically embodied social mind that also tries to reduce the remaining problems with 'simple embodiment.' I draw upon two turns in radically embodied cognitive science, the enactive turn, and the intersubjective turn. On the one hand, there is the risk of focusing too much on the individual level in social cognition that may result in new kinds of methodological individualism that partly neglect the social dimension. On the other hand, socially distributed and socially extended approaches that pay more attention to the dynamics within social interaction may encounter the risk of ignoring the individual during social interaction dynamics and simultaneously not emphasizing the role of embodiment. The approach taken is to consider several ways of describing and incorporating the (individual) social mind at the social level that includes language. I outline some ideas and motivations for how to study and expand the field of radical embodied social cognition in the future, as well as pose the ubiquitous hazard of falling back into a cognitivism view in several ways.

Plural Embodiment(s) of Mind. Genealogy and Guidelines for a Radically Embodied Approach to Mind and Consciousness

This article focuses on a scientific approach to the study of cognition that Warren McCulloch introduced in the era of cybernetics as "experimental epistemology." In line with recent attempts to highlight its contribution to cognitive science and AI, our article intends to draw attention to its unexplored influence on contemporary embodied approaches to the investigation of mind and consciousness. To this end, we will survey a series of models of cognitive systems genealogically related to the McCulloch-Pitts networks-based modeling approach, i.e., von Foerster's model of the biological computer, the Maturana-Varela model of the autopoietic system, and Varela's model of emergent selves. Based on examination of the relevant aspects of these models, we will argue that they offered the McCulloch-Pitts "cybernetic of networks" a coherent methodological and theoretical line of development, complementary to the well-known computationalist one. As we will show, this alternative evolutionary line empowered the biological orientation of McCulloch's experimental epistemology, laying foundations for contemporary "radically embodied" approaches to mind and consciousness - in particular the Thompson-Varela approach. We will identify the heritage of this tradition of inquiry for future research in cognitive science and AI by proposing guidelines that synthetize how its methodological and theoretical insights suggest taking into account the role(s) played by the biological body in cognitive processes - consciousness included.

Assistive powered exoskeleton for complete spinal cord injury: correlations between walking ability and exoskeleton control

BACKGROUND

Wearable powered robotic exoskeletons allow patients with complete spinal cord injury (SCI) to practice over-ground real-world gait scenarios. The global functional interaction subject-exoskeleton is a key factor to produce interlimb coordinated movements. Efficacy and efficiency of over-ground walking abilities using powered exoskeletons are related not only to the symbiotic sensory-motor interaction subject-exoskeleton but also to exoskeleton control.

AIM

Assess if walking ability of motor complete SCI patients at thoracic or lower level, using a wearable powered exoskeleton (ReWalk), can be influenced by different exoskeleton software control.

DESIGN

Observational study; an open, non-comparative, non-randomized study.

SETTING

A single neurological rehabilitation center for inpatients and outpatients.

POPULATION

Fifteen SCI chronic patients (4 females and 11 males) were recruited and divided in two groups: group 1, trained with the first software generation of ReWalk, and group 2, trained with the second software generation, a software upgrade of the previous version.

METHODS

Subjects were trained during three 60-minute sessions a week, during at least eight weeks using ReWalk, a wearable lower limb powered exoskeleton that allows thoracic or lower level motor-complete individuals with SCI to walk, stand, sit and climb/descend stairs. Outcome measures, collected at the end of the training period wearing the exoskeleton, were: 6-min Walking Test, 10-m Walking Test, and the time necessary to pass from sitting to standing and start to walk (STS-time). For each group Pearson Coefficient was calculated to explore correlations between the subjects' characteristics and gait performance reached at the end of the training period.

RESULTS

Group 1 showed correlation between performances and weight, height, neurological lesion level, while group 2 showed no correlation between performances weight and height, but correlation only with neurological lesion level. Group 2 covered more distance in 6 min (+124.52%) and required less time (-70.34%) to perform 10 mtWT and to STS-time (-38.25%) if compared to group 1.

CONCLUSIONS

ReWalk allows chronic complete spinal cord injury patients to perform over-ground walking. Different exoskeleton software control of the smoothness of the gait pattern improves functional outcome, eliminating the relationship between anthropometric factors and gait performances. The smoothness of the kinematic control of the lower limbs of the exoskeleton is a key factor to facilitate human-robot interaction and to increase walking abilities of the subject.

CLINICAL REHABILITATION IMPACT

To underline how the kinematic control of the exoskeleton influences the walking abilities of the complex system subject-exoskeleton.

The Body Speaks: Using the Mirror Game to Link Attachment and Non-verbal Behavior

The Mirror Game (MG) is a common exercise in dance/movement therapy and drama therapy. It is used to promote participants' ability to enter and remain in a state of togetherness. In spite of the wide use of the MG by practitioners, it is only recently that scientists begun to use the MG in research, examining its correlates, validity, and reliability. This study joins this effort by reporting on the identification of scale items to describe the non-verbal behavior expressed during the MG and its correlation to measures of attachment. Thus, we explored the application of the MG as a tool for assessing the embodiment of attachment in adulthood. Forty-eight participants (22 females, mean age = 33.2) played the MG with the same gender-matched expert players. All MG were videotaped. In addition, participants were evaluated on two central measurements of attachment in adulthood: The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Experience in Close Relationship questionnaire (ECR). To analyze the data, we developed the "MG scale" that coded the non-verbal behavior during the movement interaction, using 19 parameters. The sub-scales were reduced using factor analysis into two dimensions referred to as "together" and "free." The free factor was significantly correlated to both measurements of attachment: Participants classified as having secure attachment on the AAI, received higher scores on the MG free factor than participants classified as insecure [t(46) = 7.858, p = 0.000]. Participants, who were high on the avoidance dimension on the ECR, were low on the MG free factor [r(48) = -0.285, p = 0.007]. This is the first study to examine the MG as it is used by practitioners and its correlation to highly standardized measures. This exploratory study may be considered as part of the first steps of exploring the MG as a standardized assessment tool. The advantages of the MG as a simple, non-verbal movement interaction demonstrate some of the strengths of dance/movement and drama therapy practice.

Representational fluidity in embodied (artificial) cognition

Theories of embodied cognition agree that the body plays some role in human cognition, but disagree on the precise nature of this role. While it is (together with the environment) fundamentally engrained in the so-called 4E (or multi-E) cognition stance, there also exists interpretations wherein the body is merely an input/output interface for cognitive processes that are entirely computational. In the present paper, we show that even if one takes such a strong computationalist position, the role of the body must be more than an interface to the world. To achieve human cognition, the computational mechanisms of a cognitive agent must be capable not only of appropriate reasoning over a given set of symbolic representations; they must in addition be capable of updating the representational framework itself (leading to the titular representational fluidity). We demonstrate this by considering the necessary properties that an artificial agent with these abilities need to possess. The core of the argument is that these updates must be falsifiable in the Popperian sense while simultaneously directing representational shifts in a direction that benefits the agent. We show that this is achieved by the progressive, bottom-up symbolic abstraction of low-level sensorimotor connections followed by top-down instantiation of testable perception-action hypotheses. We then discuss the fundamental limits of this representational updating capacity, concluding that only fully embodied learners exhibiting such a priori perception-action linkages are able to sufficiently ground spontaneously-generated symbolic representations and exhibit the full range of human cognitive capabilities. The present paper therefore has consequences both for the theoretical understanding of human cognition, and for the design of autonomous artificial agents.

Exploring the Multi-Layered Affordances of Composing and Performing Interactive Music with Responsive Technologies

The question motivating the work presented here, starting from a view of music as embodied and situated activity, is how can we account for the complexity of interactive music performance situations. These are situations in which human performers interact with responsive technologies, such as sensor-driven technology or sound synthesis affected by analysis of the performed sound signal. This requires investigating in detail the underlying mechanisms, but also providing a more holistic approach that does not lose track of the complex whole constituted by the interactions and relationships of composers, performers, audience, technologies, etc. The concept of affordances has frequently been invoked in musical research, which has seen a “bodily turn” in recent years, similar to the development of the embodied cognition approach in the cognitive sciences. We therefore begin by broadly delineating its usage in the cognitive sciences in general, and in music research in particular. We argue that what is still missing in the discourse on musical affordances is an encompassing theoretical framework incorporating the sociocultural dimensions that are fundamental to the situatedness and embodiment of interactive music performance and composition. We further argue that the cultural affordances framework, proposed by Rietveld and Kiverstein (2014) and recently articulated further by Ramstead et al. (2016) in this journal, although not previously applied to music, constitutes a promising starting point. It captures and elucidates this complex web of relationships in terms of shared landscapes and individual fields of affordances. We illustrate this with examples foremost from the first author's artistic work as composer and performer of interactive music. This sheds new light on musical composition as a process of construction—and embodied mental simulation—of situations, guiding the performers' and audience's attention in shifting fields of affordances. More generally, we believe that the theoretical perspectives and concrete examples discussed in this paper help to elucidate how situations—and with them affordances—are dynamically constructed through the interactions of various mechanisms as people engage in embodied and situated activity.

Movement cognition and narration of the emotions treatment versus standard speech therapy in the treatment of children with borderline intellectual functioning: a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

Borderline intellectual functioning (BIF) is defined as a "health meta-condition… characterized by various cognitive dysfunctions associated with an intellectual quotient (IQ) between 71 and 85 which determines a deficit in the individual's functioning both in the restriction of activities and in the limitation of social participation". It can be caused by many factors, including a disadvantaged background and prematurity. BIF affects 7-12% of primary school children that show academic difficulties due to poor executive functioning. In many children with BIF, language, movement and social abilities are also affected, making it difficult to take part in daily activities. Dropping out of school and psychological afflictions such as anxiety and depression are common in children with BIF. This study investigates whether an intensive rehabilitation program that involves all of the areas affected in children with BIF (Movement, Cognition and Narration of emotions, MCNT) is more effective than Standard Speech Therapy (SST).

METHODS

This is a multicenter interventional single blind randomized controlled study. Children aged between 6 to 11 years who attend a mainstream primary school and have multiple learning difficulties, behavioral problems and an IQ ranging between 85 to 70 have been enrolled. Participants are randomly allocated to one of three groups. The first group receives individual treatment with SST for 45 min, twice a week for 9 months. The second group receives the experimental treatment MCNT for 3 h per day, 5 days/ week for 9 months and children work in small groups. The third group consists of children on a waiting list for the SST for nine months.

DISCUSSION

BIF is a very frequent condition with no ad hoc treatment. Over the long term, there is a high risk to develop psychiatric disorders in adulthood. Due to its high social impact, we consider it very important to intervene during childhood so as to intercept the remarkable plasticity of the developing brain.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

"Study Let them grow: A new intensive and multimodal Treatment for children with borderline intellectual functioning based on Movement, Cognition and Narration of emotions", retrospectively registered in ISRCTN Register with ISRCTN81710297 at 2017-01-09.