Minimal cognition

The concept of autonomy is of crucial importance for understanding life and cognition. Whereas cellular and organismic autonomy is based in the self-production of the material infrastructure sustaining the existence of living beings as such, we are interested in how biological autonomy can be expanded into forms of autonomous agency, where autonomy as a form of organization is extended into the behaviour of an agent in interaction with its environment (and not its material self-production).

In this research line, we focus on the development of minimal models of sensorimotor agency, exploring the construction of a domain of interactions creating a dynamical interface between agent and environment.

Publications

Aguilera M, Bedia MG and Barandiaran XE (2016). Extended Neural Metastability in an Embodied Model of Sensorimotor Coupling. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 10:76. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2016.00076

Aguilera, M (2015). Interaction Dynamics and Autonomy in Cognitive Systems. PhD thesis, University of Zaragoza, Spain.

Izquierdo, EJ, Aguilera, M and Beer, RD (2013). Analysis of ultrastability in small dynamical recurrent neural networks. In P. Lio, O. Miglino, G. Nicosia, S. Nolfi & M. Pavone (Eds.), Advances in Artificial Life: ECAL 2013 (pp. 51-58).