Q:Cognitive Science is considered to be an interdisciplinary field, separate from but related to Anthropology, Artificial Intelligence, Education, Linguistics, Neuroscience,

Philosophy, and Psychology. Please explain how your research topic belongs within Cognitive Science rather than one of these disciplines, drawing connections between your topic and at least three of these disciplines. A: My current research is an extension of recent work by MacManus, Ulman, and Gilbert (2008) and requires the use of perspectives from neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and psychology. This however is properly called cognitive science, as opposed to any of these other disciplines since it is interdisciplinary and makes use of all of Marr's levels of analysis (Marr 1982). Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, it follows the cognitive science paradigm of viewing the mind as a machine, specifically a computational device (Boden 2006). The work begins with a psychological phenomenon involving people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD is when photoreceptors in the macula of elderly people stop functioning yielding a blind spot (called a scotoma) in the persons field of view (Zur & Ulman 2003). While people generally are not able to see images that are briefly flashed in their scotoma, there are cases where the missing image is filled in (Zur & Ulman 2003). An example of this is when a pattern of dots is shown to the person and the person is able to count the number of dots falling in large scotomata. Similarly when two dimensional gratings are shown, the patients see the gratings continuing in their scotoma, although these are blurrier than the rest of the image. The quality of this filling-in process depends on the density of the lines or dots, with more dense images yielding better filling in, and less dense images sometimes yielding gaps in then lines or dots. Explaining this phenomenon requires the use of an information-processing view of

mind. Clearly the visual system is able to use not only local information, but global features in constructing an image. Thus when a gap in a line occurs due to retinal damage, the visual system still infers there to be a continuous line. The strength of this inference depends on the strength of the global information. When there are more dots, there is more evidence that a dot exists in the missing area and thus the person sees a better image. While such work is psychological, given that the mind is viewed as an information processing device this qualifies as cognitive science (Boden 2006). McManus et al made a model of what happens in these AMD sufferers paying attention to all 3 levels of Marr's analysis. This model draws heavily on work in artificial intelligence, specifically machine vision, as well as neuroscience. At the implementational level, the neuroscience underlying vision has been well studied. Information received by the photoreceptors in the eye is passed through the lateral geniculate nucleus and to primary visual cortex (V1), before going to higher level areas of the brain. At all parts of this pathway, the cells predominately respond to a certain area of the visual field called a receptive field (Hubert & Wiesel 1968). For instance, cells in V1 will change their firing rate when a spot of light appears in their receptive field. The firing rate is different depending on where in the receptive field the light appears, showing maximum and minimum firing rates when lines are present in the receptive field. Due to this, the cells may be thought of as edge detectors. The firing rate is determined by the orientation of these lines, with cells firing the most at a certain preferred orientation, with the firing rate dropping off the further from this orientation the line is. When the photoreceptors are damaged, the corresponding cells in V1, which share the same receptive fields and receive their input indirectly from these cells, lose their activity. This area is called a lesion projection zone (LPZ) since the cells that are lesioned in the retina indirectly send their projections here. Over time however these cells in the LPZ can shift their

receptive fields to outside the damaged area. Additionally after retinal damage, new axons are sprouted from v1 neurons outside of the LPZ, innervating the LPZ. These new axons intensify and reinforce already existing connections (Darian-Smith & Gilbert 1994). These connections show a pattern where cells having preferences for similar orientations of lines in their receptive field are more likely to be connected (Bosking et al 1997). It had already been suggested that these horizontal connections between cells in V1 subserve contour integration (Kapadia et al 1995). That is since cells can be viewed as edge detectors, and those whose edges are similarly oriented are often connected, cells that are found on the same contours of an image will reinforce each other. Incidentally, in machine vision edge detection and contour integration are serious issues. While the solutions to these issues are clearly different for brains and machines at the implementational level, they are identical at the computational and arguably the algorithmic levels. Guy and Medioni (1996) designed an algorithm for determining global contours in an image. This used local edges discovered by a lower level process and voted for possible global contours. Possible contours which had more edges present receive more votes and the strength of these votes is determined by the likelihood of the set of edges being on the same contour. It had already been shown that edges in natural images had a tendency to be co-circular or collinear, that is two edges tangent to the same circle, or two edges on the same line (Geisler, Perry, Super & Gallogly, 2001). This was used to determine the probability that a pair of edges are on the same contour. Despite being designed for pure machine vision, McManus et al found use for this algorithm in their model. Each cell in V1 represents the presence or absence of an edge and those cells whose edges are collinear often send excitatory horizontal connections. In this way edges get to vote for contours as in Guy and Medioni, and the saliency of these edges increases. This form of representation already yields a way to fill in missing information. Contours

which are likely to exist, but where edges are not found due to missing input, can allow one to infer missing edges. At the neurological level, those cells in the LPZ receive no feedforward input of whether there is an edge in their receptive field. However, they are connected to cells whose receptive fields are cocircular or collinear. These cells are then able to excite the cells in the LPZ leading them to fire, signally that there is an edge in their receptive field. This is ideal since natural image statistics suggest that the likelihood of their being edges present in their receptive fields are higher than in other non-cocircular edge detecting cells (Geisler, Perry, Super & Gallogly, 2001). McManus et al then only needed to determine the weights of the synapses as a function of the amount of lesioning. Then by simulating the responses of these cells due to certain images with ablated inputs, they were able to model the firing rates of the cells in V1 and from this construct the inferred image. The results of their model where impressive not only in their ability to match and explain the psychological data, but also the ability to reconstruct images with missing input without top-down processes. However one thing that was missing from their model was an account of how the weights of the synapses are able to adjust in response to ablated input so as to yield learning. The current work is then extending this model with an account of how learning takes place. This of course will use knowledge about what biological changes can happen in the brain resulting in synaptic plasticity. The goal is to then see which of these can yield the correct learning behavior at the algorithmic level. This will then not only simulate visual processing in lesioned and unlesioned brains, but will show how the brain adapts after being lesioned. Many people have given many definitions as to what constitutes cognitive science, however this work fits all of them. The one definition that I most agree with is that, cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind, informed by theoretical concepts drawn from

computer science and control theory. (Boden 2006) Sometimes, it is said that it must rely on two or more of the various sub-disciplines (Miller Polson, & Kintsch 1984). Some don't specify that the mind is viewed as computational device (Thagard 1996). This work clearly meets all of the most stringent requirements. The mind is understood as a computational device and the work meets the requirement of interdisciplinarity, being heavily informed by three different disciplines. It is first informed by work in psychology, specifically on the visual phenomena of AMD sufferers like in Zur and Ulman (2003). It would however be a stretch to think of this work as psychology given the emphasis on simulating the fine neurological detail. It also draws a lot from artificial intelligence. Insights from understanding in machine vision are highly relevant here as the important problems of edge detection and contour integration are very important. Indeed McManus et al's algorithm is based on one that originated in pure machine vision (Geisler, Perry, Super & Gallogly 2001). Theoretical considerations from machine learning will also be vital to develop and understand the learning algorithm, though of course we are limited by biological plausibility. Given that the actual work involves making a program that performs behavior that would qualify as artificial intelligence, one could classify this work as AI but this too is a stretch. The goal is simulating the neurobiology that underlies this process which from an AI perspective is irrelevant and indeed an impediment, since the same process could be carried out more efficiently. Finally this work draws extensively from neuroscience and could without qualifications be considered a work of neuroscience. However, given that it seeks to explain more than just neurobiology, and answer questions at all levels of Marr's hierarchy, it is properly called cognitive science. While people do not mention this as definitional, I feel that it is essential for cognitive scientists to provide some level of detail at all of Marr's levels of description (Marr 1982). This is an important feature which distinguishes cognitive science from related disciplines. For

instance work in psychology cannot be described as cognitive science if they explain only what the subject does (computational level), but not how and with what representations (algorithmic level). However, work that does not draw from disciplines other than psychology can be considered cognitive science if they do specify what happens at the algorithmic level (e.g. Miller 1956). This current work pays significant attention to all the levels of Marr's hierarchy. First at the computational level, the problem being solved is vision and specifically learning to adapt to a loss of input. At the algorithmic level, determining the actual algorithm is the goal of the work. McManus et al had already specified what happens at an algorithmic level, but the current work will do so in more detail. Finally at the implementational level, much of the details of the neuroscience of vision is known and specifically what changes occur following retinal lesions. This work is of course highly sensitive to this level, providing details that are based on the known details of the neurobiology and simulating the relevant parts. This work could potentially yield predictions about other details at the neural level that underlay learning. Not all work in cognitive science specifies much detail at the implementational level, but a certain amount is always understood and essential. Does the work describe something happening in brains or computers? Is it in monkey brains or human brains? There are of course always questions of neurological plausibility. Could such an algorithm be implemented in the human brain? In conclusion this work is clearly an example of cognitive science. It is highly interdisciplinary, making use of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and psychology. Additionally it inherits the status of being called cognitive science from prior work which it is based upon. It is quite explicitly viewing the mind as a machine, as well as paying attention to Marr's levels of explanation.

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