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The feeling of understanding: an exploration with neural models

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Abstract

There exists a dynamic interaction between the world of information and the world of concepts, which is seen as a quintessential byproduct of the cultural evolution of individuals as well as of human communities. The feeling of understanding (FU) is that subjective experience that encompasses all the emotional and intellectual processes we undergo in the process of gathering evidence to achieve an understanding of an event. This experience is part of every person that has dedicated substantial efforts in scientific areas under constant research progress. The FU may have an initial growth followed by a quasi-stable regime and a possible decay when accumulated data exceeds the capacity of an individual to integrate them into an appropriate conceptual scheme. We propose a neural representation of FU based on the postulate that all cognitive activities are mapped onto dynamic neural vectors. Two models are presented that incorporate the mutual interactions among data and concepts. The first one shows how in the short time scale, FU can rise, reach a temporary steady state and subsequently decline. The second model, operating over longer scales of time, shows how a reorganization and compactification of data into global categories initiated by conceptual syntheses can yield random cycles of growth, decline and recovery of FU.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by PEDECIBA, CSIC and ANII, Uruguay (EM) and a Grant from Washington College, MD, USA (JL). The authors thank Juan C. Valle-Lisboa for stimulating discussions during the preparation of this work.

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Appendix

Appendix

Let us illustrate how FU evolves with a minimalist example.

  1. 1.

    In the first step we have a large data vector \({\text{V}}_{\text{D}}^{\text{S}}\) = (…, A, …, B, …, C, …), where A, B and C are clusters of data associated with singular topics. This data vector induces a concept vector \({\text{V}}_{\text{C}}^{\text{S}}\) = (…, Ca, …, Cb, …, Cc, …) with clusters of concepts Ca, Cb and Cc. In the binary model, clusters A, B, C, Ca, Cb and Cc are mapped onto 1’s and the inter-cluster spaces are mapped onto 0’s, giving vectors \({\text{V}}_{\text{D}}\) and \({\text{V}}_{\text{C}}\). Let us then imagine a miniature 12-dimensional space where \({\text{V}}_{\text{D}}\) = (001000100100) and \({\text{V}}_{\text{C}}\) = (001000100100). In this ideal situation the initial correlation coefficient K is equal to 1.

  2. 2.

    The subsequent accumulation of data increases the number of 1’s in \({\text{V}}_{\text{D}}\) = (011101100111) but leaves \({\text{V}}_{\text{C}}\) temporarily unchanged. This activity is similar to the process of augmenting the number of nodes in the knowledge graphs illustrated in “Knowledge networks” section and Fig. 2. Therefore, the value of K decreases (K < 1). The dynamics of this scenario for high-dimensional vectors are modeled by Eqs. (15)–(16) and their behavior are depicted in Figs. 4 and 5.

  3. 3.

    To simplify to the maximum the complex interactions between data and concepts, let us imagine that concepts are enriched and data are reconstituted. Then we may have, \({\text{V}}_{\text{D}}\) = (001101100110) and \({\text{V}}_{\text{C}}\) = (001101100110). In this stage, the correlation K will reach again a maximum value of 1. After this process, we follow a new path to the first step (1) with reconfigured vectors. The evolution of high-dimensional vectors follow Eqs. (17)–(18) and their behavior are sketched in Figs. 6 and 7.

In real situations the sparseness of data and concept vectors create new filling niches of 1’s while maintaining the clusters distant from each other.

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Mizraji, E., Lin, J. The feeling of understanding: an exploration with neural models. Cogn Neurodyn 11, 135–146 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-016-9414-0

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