On the way to bridging the gap between the mental apparatus and the neurobiological layer

Abstract

The mental apparatus – mind, psyche, soul – expresses itself in thought, play, love, creating, sex, planning, in fact in all human activities. Its foundation is the nervous system, as it is the central information system of the human being. For those interested in the connection between the neuronal level and the mental level, how is it possible to comprehend and model the connection between the neurobiological and the psychological? What does a natural scientific model of the mental apparatus look like? These questions led to the SiMA project (Simulation of the Mental Apparatus & Application). This article surveys the foundations of information theory and computer technology that underlie the SiMA project, and explains how the view of the neuropsychoanalytic world can be mapped into a model that can then be simulated and tested. The first results of several simulated case studies are described, suggesting that SiMA provides a way to validate theories of neuropsychoanalysis.

Keywords:

• Artificial intelligence
• cognitive science
• psychoanalytic theory
• decision making
• Mealy theory

Acknowledgement

The authors are thankful to Richard J. Kessler, D.O, for his valuable feedback in the course of writing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Gerhard Zucker http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4258-2849

Notes

1 The requirements in computer technology are mainly to research and develop hardware and software in combination (closing the gap between both areas). The area of computer scientists is mainly algorithms.

2 Only the dynamic (dataflow) is in the focus, not the functions (the entities, the structure etc.) of a system, which determines the dataflow.

3 In computer technology processes are often abstracted, so that engineers can use behavior models in the sense of Braitenberg which are much easier to program with specific algorithms, because the market offers highly efficient tools for this task.

4 One of the authors, Dietmar Dietrich, worked in such international bodies for over 20 years, which was essential for the work in SiMA.

5 We have to consider that in the information theory of computer technology the functional models are described by their functions (see again (Braitenberg, 1984) and behavioral models by information, the data which are memorized, and manipulated by the functions.

6 Here it must indicate that the term symbol is used in the sense of the computer information theory. It is nothing else as an abstract representation of something. In psychoanalysis a symbol has a different meaning.

Additional information

Funding

This work is partly funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) within project KORE [grant agreement number 848805].