Research Category

Computational cognitive neuroscience

Area of Interest

The higher order cognition, Brain, Robots

Recent Thoughts

We know that human can conduct deep cognitive thinking by manipulating logics and language. And it has been considered that such cognitive processes can be achieved by having symbol representations and their manipulations in the conventional information science. It is, however, true that no traces of such symbols have been found in brains in the neuroscience studies. On this account my research goal is to provide an alternative explanation for the mechanisms of human brains those look like as if there were symbols and their manipulations there.

Publications

•  Tani J: “Autonomy of Self at criticality: The perspective from synthetic neuro-robotics” Adaptive Behavior, Vol.17, No.5, pp.421-443 (2009)
•  Yamashita Y and Tani J: “Emergence of functional hierarchy in a multiple timescale neural network model: a humanoid robot experiment”, PLoS Computational Biology, Vol.4, Issue.11, e1000220 (2008)
•  Tani J, Nishimoto R, Paine RW: “Achieving ‘organic compositionality’ through self-organization: Reviews on brain-inspired robotics experiments”, Neural Networks, Vol.21, pp.584-603 (2008)

Recent/Ongoing Works

Home Page

http://www.bdc.brain.riken.go.jp/~tani

Affiliation

RIKEN