Leonardo Ferraro’s research while affiliated with University of Toronto and other places

We investigated whether synchrony at a physiological level (i.e., real-time correspondence of biological indices between two individuals) related to observed levels of dyadic attunement (i.e., levels of connectedness, joint attention, and reciprocity), and whether these measures could distinguish between mother-child dyads with and without clinical levels of externalizing behavioral problems. Eighty-three clinical and 35 nonclinical dyads (7–12 years-old) discussed a contentious topic preceded and followed by a positive topic while their heart rates were recorded. Changes in dyadic attunement from the last discussion relative to the first were taken as an index of how well dyads ‘repaired’ their relationship. Results showed that clinical dyads had lower levels of dyadic attunement across all discussions compared to nonclinical dyads. Evidence that physiological synchrony could distinguish clinical from nonclinical dyads, however, was merely suggestive. Physiological synchrony was sensitive to the emotional context of the discussions as more dyads demonstrated physiological synchrony in the last compared to the first discussion. Moreover, dyads who demonstrated physiological synchrony also showed higher levels of repair. The outcomes of this study suggest that physiological synchrony between mothers and their children is sensitive to emotional context during interactions, and particularly during periods of repair when dyads more actively reconnect with each other after a negative interaction.

Let us begin the study of wisdom by noting that it involves some kind of cognitive improvement that affords the living of a good life. When we use the term 'cognition' or 'cognitive', it should be broadly construed as the terms are used in cognitive science, meaning thinking, reasoning, memory, emotion and perception. There are factors such as good fortune that can improve life, but wisdom centres on a kind of self-transformation of cognitive processing that enhances the quality of life in some comprehensive manner. Philosophers (especially ancient philosophers) have devoted a lot of time to addressing the related questions of what wisdom is and what it is to live a good life. Recently, psychologists have also broached the topic because of the central role of cognitive processes in wisdom (Brown, 2000; Sternberg, 1990, 2003; Sternberg & Jordan, 2005). Neuroscientists have also begun to explore the topic as they have forayed into explaining higher cognitive processes, and wisdom seems to involve higher cognitive processes such as selfregulation and problem solving (Goldberg, 2005; Hall, 2010; Meeks & Jeste, 2009). It stands to reason that cognitive science, which attempts to create theoretical links between philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific constructs (by making use of information processing ideas drawn from the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence), could have a lot to say about wisdom. In a sense, wisdom is a quintessential cognitive science topic: cognitive science offers both a diverse and integrated theoretical perspective that makes it uniquely suited to investigating and explicating a phenomenon as cognitively complex as wisdom. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013. All rights are reserved.

In this paper we review arguments for the central nature of the problem of relevance, as well as arguing that relevance realization is the basis for general intelligence, supporting this position with recent findings in neurodynamics and neuroanatomy, as well as machine learning and graph theory.