Colloquium talk by Professor Martin Conway
- Prof. Dr. Sen Cheng
- /
- July 11, 2016
On July 11, 2016, we will have Professor Martin Conway from City University London at the INI. He will give a Colloquium talk that day (exceptionally on a Monday) at 17:00 in GA 04/187. His talk will be on "Narrative Thinking, Memory, Amnesia and Fictional Memories".
Abstract:
In this paper I develop the concept of ‘narrative thinking’. Narrative thinking occurs when the brain is in default mode and not task-focused. It features autobiographical remembering, future thinking, and what I will term ‘fictionalization’ of the self. Four attributes of narrative thinking are coherence, meaningfulness, perspective and emotion. It is thinking we default to when cognition is not driven by a specific task and I suggest that it is critical in maintaining a dynamic and healthy self. I consider how this conceptualization of narrative thinking can be used to give new insights into memory impairment following brain damage and the generation of fictional or false memories.
The Institut für Neuroinformatik (INI) is a interdisciplinary research unit of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. We aim to understand fundamental principles that characterize how organisms generate behavior and cognition while linked to their environments through sensory and effector systems. Inspired by insights into natural cognitive systems, we seek new solutions to problems of information processing in artificial cognitive systems. We draw from a variety of disciplines that include experimental approaches from psychology and neurophysiology, theoretical approaches from physics, mathematics, and computer science, including, in particular, machine learning, artificial intelligence, autonomous robotics, and computer vision.
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