Journal of healthcare information management: JHIM
Medical diagnosis is accomplished by a set of complex cognitive processes requiring the iterative... more Medical diagnosis is accomplished by a set of complex cognitive processes requiring the iterative application of abduction, deduction, and induction. Previous research in computational modeling of medical diagnosis has had only limited success by defining sub-domains that offer a computationally tractable problem. However, the aspect of diagnostic reasoning requiring intelligence lies in the extraction of a well-structured problem from an ill-structured one. We propose an agent, based on the Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent (LIDA) model of cognition, which utilizes deliberation, learning, and a neurologically inspired cognitive cycle. The proposed agent, MAX (for "Medical Agent X") will be equipped to comprehend clinical data in the context of its perceptual ontology and learned associations, and to construct, evaluate, and refine by investigation a differential diagnosis that progressively reduces the dimensionality of its search space with each iteration. Furtherm...
The complexity of medical problem solving presents a formidable challenge to current theories of ... more The complexity of medical problem solving presents a formidable challenge to current theories of cognition. Building on earlier work, we claim that the systemslevel cognitive model LIDA (for “Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent”) offers a number of specific advantages for modeling diagnostic thinking. The LIDA Model employs a consciousness mechanism in an iterative cognitive cycle of understanding, attention, and action, endowing it with the ability to integrate multiple sensory modalities into flexible, dynamic, multimodal representations according to strategies that support specific task demands. These representations enable diverse, asynchronous cognitive processes to be dynamically activated according to rapidly changing contexts, much like in biological cognition. The recent completion of the LIDA Framework, a software API supporting the domainindependent LIDA Model, allows the construction of domainspecific agents that test the Model and/or enhance traditional machine learning algorithms with human-style problem solving. Medical Agent X (MAX) is a medical diagnosis agent under development using the LIDA Model and Framework. We review LIDA’s approach to exploring cognition, assert its appropriateness for problem solving in complex domains such as diagnosis, and outline the design of an initial implementation for MAX.
"History suggests that the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous." (Kuhn 1... more "History suggests that the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous." (Kuhn 1962, p. 15)
Significant debate on fundamental issues remains in the subfields of cognitive science, including... more Significant debate on fundamental issues remains in the subfields of cognitive science, including perception, memory, attention, action selection, learning, and others. Psychology, euroscience, and artificial intelligence each contribute alternative and sometimes conflicting perspectives on the supervening problem of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Current efforts toward a broad-based, systems-level model of minds cannot await theoretical convergence in each of the relevant subfields. Such work therefore requires the formulation of tentative hypotheses, based on current knowledge, that serve to connect cognitive functions into a theoretical framework for the study of the mind. We term such hypotheses “conceptual commitments” and describe the hypotheses underlying one such model, the Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent (LIDA) Model. Our intention is to initiate a discussion among AGI researchers about which conceptual commitments are essential, or particularly useful, toward creating AGI agents.
Medical diagnosis is accomplished by a set of complex cognitive processes requiring the iterative... more Medical diagnosis is accomplished by a set of complex cognitive processes requiring the iterative application of Charles Sanders Peirce’s three modes of inference: abduction, deduction, and induction. Previous research in computational modeling of medical diagnosis has had only limited success by defining sub-domains which offer a computationally tractable problem. However, the aspect of diagnostic reasoning requiring intelligence lies in the extraction of a wellstructured problem from an ill-structured one—the very difficulty obviated by expert systems which begin with a well-structured problem and lack the robustness of the human clinician. We propose a design for an agent based on the LIDA architecture, a model of cognition designed for implementations requiring deliberation and learning, which utilizes a psychologically and neurologically inspired cognitive cycle. The proposed agent, MAX (for Medical Agent X) will be equipped to comprehend clinical data in the context of its perceptual ontology and learned associations, and to construct, evaluate, and refine by investigation a differential diagnosis from that data which progressively reduces the dimensionality of its search space with each iteration. Furthermore, the agent will appropriately modify its own ontology with experience and supervised instruction, in a manner inspired by traditional medical education.
In order to successfully develop agents with the LIDA Framework, a basic understanding of the LID... more In order to successfully develop agents with the LIDA Framework, a basic understanding of the LIDA Model and its analogues in the Framework is necessary. The LIDA Model is both a conceptual model of minds and a computational model that provides an architectural design for autonomous agents. The LIDA Framework is a partial implementation of the LIDA Model in the form of a software framework using the Java programming language. Throughout our discussion, the reader should bear in mind the differences between the Model and the ...
Sparse distributed memory is an auto-associative memory system that stores high dimensional Boole... more Sparse distributed memory is an auto-associative memory system that stores high dimensional Boolean vectors. Here we present an extension of the original SDM, the Integer SDM that uses modular arithmetic integer vectors rather than binary vectors. This extension preserves many of the desirable properties of the original SDM: auto-associativity, content addressability, distributed storage, and robustness over noisy inputs. In addition, it improves the representation capabilities of the memory and is more robust over normalization. It can also be extended to support forgetting and reliable sequence storage. We performed several simulations that test the noise robustness property and capacity of the memory. Theoretical analyses of the memory's fidelity and capacity are also presented.
A dream of humanoid robot researchers is to develop a complete “human-like” (whatever that means)... more A dream of humanoid robot researchers is to develop a complete “human-like” (whatever that means) artificial agent both in terms of body and brain. We now have seen an increasing number of humanoid robots (such as Honda's ASIMO, Aldebaran's Nao and many others). These, however, display only a limited number of cognitive skills in terms of perception, learning and decision-making. On the other hand, brain research has begun to produce computational models such as LIDA. In this paper, we propose an intermediate approach for body-brain integration in a form of a scenario-based distributed system. Busy hospital Emergency Departments (ED) are concerned with shortening the waiting times of patients, with relieving overburdened triage team physicians, nurses and medics, and with reducing the number of mistakes. Here we propose a system of cognitive robots and a supervisor, dubbed the TriageBot System that would gather both logistical and medical information, as well as take diagnos...
2010 10th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 2010
Abstract A dream of humanoid robot researchers is to develop a complete “human-like”(whatever tha... more Abstract A dream of humanoid robot researchers is to develop a complete “human-like”(whatever that means) artificial agent both in terms of body and brain. We now have seen an increasing number of humanoid robots (such as Honda's ASIMO, Aldebaran's Nao and many others). These, however, display only a limited number of cognitive skills in terms of perception, learning and decision-making. On the other hand, brain research has begun to produce computational models such as LIDA. In this paper, we propose an intermediate ...
Journal of healthcare information management: JHIM
Medical diagnosis is accomplished by a set of complex cognitive processes requiring the iterative... more Medical diagnosis is accomplished by a set of complex cognitive processes requiring the iterative application of abduction, deduction, and induction. Previous research in computational modeling of medical diagnosis has had only limited success by defining sub-domains that offer a computationally tractable problem. However, the aspect of diagnostic reasoning requiring intelligence lies in the extraction of a well-structured problem from an ill-structured one. We propose an agent, based on the Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent (LIDA) model of cognition, which utilizes deliberation, learning, and a neurologically inspired cognitive cycle. The proposed agent, MAX (for "Medical Agent X") will be equipped to comprehend clinical data in the context of its perceptual ontology and learned associations, and to construct, evaluate, and refine by investigation a differential diagnosis that progressively reduces the dimensionality of its search space with each iteration. Furtherm...
The complexity of medical problem solving presents a formidable challenge to current theories of ... more The complexity of medical problem solving presents a formidable challenge to current theories of cognition. Building on earlier work, we claim that the systemslevel cognitive model LIDA (for “Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent”) offers a number of specific advantages for modeling diagnostic thinking. The LIDA Model employs a consciousness mechanism in an iterative cognitive cycle of understanding, attention, and action, endowing it with the ability to integrate multiple sensory modalities into flexible, dynamic, multimodal representations according to strategies that support specific task demands. These representations enable diverse, asynchronous cognitive processes to be dynamically activated according to rapidly changing contexts, much like in biological cognition. The recent completion of the LIDA Framework, a software API supporting the domainindependent LIDA Model, allows the construction of domainspecific agents that test the Model and/or enhance traditional machine learning algorithms with human-style problem solving. Medical Agent X (MAX) is a medical diagnosis agent under development using the LIDA Model and Framework. We review LIDA’s approach to exploring cognition, assert its appropriateness for problem solving in complex domains such as diagnosis, and outline the design of an initial implementation for MAX.
"History suggests that the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous." (Kuhn 1... more "History suggests that the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous." (Kuhn 1962, p. 15)
Significant debate on fundamental issues remains in the subfields of cognitive science, including... more Significant debate on fundamental issues remains in the subfields of cognitive science, including perception, memory, attention, action selection, learning, and others. Psychology, euroscience, and artificial intelligence each contribute alternative and sometimes conflicting perspectives on the supervening problem of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Current efforts toward a broad-based, systems-level model of minds cannot await theoretical convergence in each of the relevant subfields. Such work therefore requires the formulation of tentative hypotheses, based on current knowledge, that serve to connect cognitive functions into a theoretical framework for the study of the mind. We term such hypotheses “conceptual commitments” and describe the hypotheses underlying one such model, the Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent (LIDA) Model. Our intention is to initiate a discussion among AGI researchers about which conceptual commitments are essential, or particularly useful, toward creating AGI agents.
Medical diagnosis is accomplished by a set of complex cognitive processes requiring the iterative... more Medical diagnosis is accomplished by a set of complex cognitive processes requiring the iterative application of Charles Sanders Peirce’s three modes of inference: abduction, deduction, and induction. Previous research in computational modeling of medical diagnosis has had only limited success by defining sub-domains which offer a computationally tractable problem. However, the aspect of diagnostic reasoning requiring intelligence lies in the extraction of a wellstructured problem from an ill-structured one—the very difficulty obviated by expert systems which begin with a well-structured problem and lack the robustness of the human clinician. We propose a design for an agent based on the LIDA architecture, a model of cognition designed for implementations requiring deliberation and learning, which utilizes a psychologically and neurologically inspired cognitive cycle. The proposed agent, MAX (for Medical Agent X) will be equipped to comprehend clinical data in the context of its perceptual ontology and learned associations, and to construct, evaluate, and refine by investigation a differential diagnosis from that data which progressively reduces the dimensionality of its search space with each iteration. Furthermore, the agent will appropriately modify its own ontology with experience and supervised instruction, in a manner inspired by traditional medical education.
In order to successfully develop agents with the LIDA Framework, a basic understanding of the LID... more In order to successfully develop agents with the LIDA Framework, a basic understanding of the LIDA Model and its analogues in the Framework is necessary. The LIDA Model is both a conceptual model of minds and a computational model that provides an architectural design for autonomous agents. The LIDA Framework is a partial implementation of the LIDA Model in the form of a software framework using the Java programming language. Throughout our discussion, the reader should bear in mind the differences between the Model and the ...
Sparse distributed memory is an auto-associative memory system that stores high dimensional Boole... more Sparse distributed memory is an auto-associative memory system that stores high dimensional Boolean vectors. Here we present an extension of the original SDM, the Integer SDM that uses modular arithmetic integer vectors rather than binary vectors. This extension preserves many of the desirable properties of the original SDM: auto-associativity, content addressability, distributed storage, and robustness over noisy inputs. In addition, it improves the representation capabilities of the memory and is more robust over normalization. It can also be extended to support forgetting and reliable sequence storage. We performed several simulations that test the noise robustness property and capacity of the memory. Theoretical analyses of the memory's fidelity and capacity are also presented.
A dream of humanoid robot researchers is to develop a complete “human-like” (whatever that means)... more A dream of humanoid robot researchers is to develop a complete “human-like” (whatever that means) artificial agent both in terms of body and brain. We now have seen an increasing number of humanoid robots (such as Honda's ASIMO, Aldebaran's Nao and many others). These, however, display only a limited number of cognitive skills in terms of perception, learning and decision-making. On the other hand, brain research has begun to produce computational models such as LIDA. In this paper, we propose an intermediate approach for body-brain integration in a form of a scenario-based distributed system. Busy hospital Emergency Departments (ED) are concerned with shortening the waiting times of patients, with relieving overburdened triage team physicians, nurses and medics, and with reducing the number of mistakes. Here we propose a system of cognitive robots and a supervisor, dubbed the TriageBot System that would gather both logistical and medical information, as well as take diagnos...
2010 10th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 2010
Abstract A dream of humanoid robot researchers is to develop a complete “human-like”(whatever tha... more Abstract A dream of humanoid robot researchers is to develop a complete “human-like”(whatever that means) artificial agent both in terms of body and brain. We now have seen an increasing number of humanoid robots (such as Honda's ASIMO, Aldebaran's Nao and many others). These, however, display only a limited number of cognitive skills in terms of perception, learning and decision-making. On the other hand, brain research has begun to produce computational models such as LIDA. In this paper, we propose an intermediate ...
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Papers by Steve Strain