[From Rick Marken (2008.02.20.0940)]
As some of you may know, I gave a talk on Perceptual Control Theory (never using that name) to the Cognitive Forum at UCLA last month. The Cognitive Forum is a group of faculty, graduate and post-doc students interested in various aspects of cognitive psychology. I wanted to share with these folks what I was up to, modeling and research-wise, and possibly get one or two people interested in doing work in the field. It ended up being a nice reminder of why there are not more academic psychologists involved with PCT. My talk was met with stony silence from grad students and a couple of fairly hostile comments from the small number of faculty members (two) who attended (and who I’m sure were perceived as having scored points).
Yesterday I got an announcement of the next talk in the forum. I’m attaching it to this message because I think it shows what passes for science in psychology these days. Basically, what passes for science in psychology is biology. I particularly like this part of the abstract:
For example, mutations in the Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) gene, encoding Neurofibromin, a p21Ras GTPase Activating Protein (GAP), cause learning disabilities and attention deficits. Our studies have shown that the learning and memory deficits of a mouse model of NF1 (nf1+/$B!>(B ) are caused by excessive p21Ras/MAPK signaling leading to hyperphosphorylation of synapsin I, and subsequent enhanced GABA release, which in turn result in impairments in long$B!>(Bterm potentiation (LTP), a cellular mechanism of learning and memory.
Pretty intimidating, eh? How could my talk, without a single mention of “p21Ras/MAPK signaling” and “hyperphosphorylation of synapsin I” possibly hope to compete. Who cares about closed loop models of behavioral organization when there is all that cool nf1+/$B!>(B to talk about? To me, these talks sound very much like using chemical analysis of a Pentium II chip to understand how a spreadsheet program works.
Pretty depressing. But I’ll still go with Mr. Natural’s advice and “Keep on Truckin’”.
Best
Rick
Silva 2008 UCLA cognitive forum.pdf (38.9 KB)
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Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com