讲座一

Speaker: Ovid J. L. Tzeng

Title: In Search of a Missing Link: A Brand New Two-Brain Theory of Human Cognition 

Time: 15:00 – 16:30 pm, 25 August 2021 

           (Beijing, Hong Kong time)

Venue: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/779556638

            https://cuhk.zoom.cn/j/779556638

About the speaker 

Professor Ovid Tzeng is an outstanding researcher in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neurolinguistics and an experienced leader in academic institutions. He was the chancellor of University System of Taiwan, the Minister of Education, the Minister Without Portfolio, and the Minister of Council for Cultural Affairs. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Haskins Laboratories in the U.S. and an advisory board member of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders in Australia. He has also been elected to be the academician of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) since 2010 and active member of The European Academy of Sciences and Arts since 2017. He had been the Chancellor of University System of Taiwan for several years, which was created by him and established to oversee and integrate the research and teaching developments of Taiwan’s four top research universities. Prior to the Chancellorship, he was the Vice President of Academia Sinica for international affairs. He is currently an Executive member of the Committee on Human Rights of the NAS, NAE, and NAM, as well as a member of the UNESCO’s Inclusive Literacy Learning for All Project.

In Search of a Missing Link: 

 A Brand New Two-Brain Theory of Human Cognition

Ovid J. L. Tzeng

Academia Sinica

The intelligent behavior involves two parts, speedy and accurate perception of the encountered problems and precise and appropriate situational solutions and applications in an aesthetic style. In other words, intelligent behaviors can be defined as quality problem-solving, with the high potentiality for creativity and innovation. Cognitive neuroscience explores the neuronal structures and their functional interactive connectivity, which make possible the above defined intelligent behaviors. By studying the Mind-Brain-Emotion mappings at the neuronal level, cognitive neuroscientists aim to uncover the evolutionary history of human intelligence. Knowledge gained from its evolutionary steps and the accompanying quality changes of cognitive functioning enables scientists to establish evidence-based theories of cognitive developments in young children and cognitive decline in ageing population.

The traditional conceptualization of the “one head-two systems” brain theory of cognition had focused on establishing the differential roles of cognitive functions in the two hemispheres (i.e., left brain for fine temporal resolution and right brain for spatial orientation). This ancient part of the brain, cerebellum, had long been ignored by the scientific world of cognition because it is small and looks just an extension of the cerebral cortex with a major role in the control of physical motion. As a consequence of such a conventional thought, neuroimaging studies (e.g., PET, fMRI, fNIRS) by cognitive neuroscientists in the past usually scan cortical and subcortical areas of human and animal brain but regrettably without paying attention to the cerebellum down below. However, more and more recent studies, which focus on scanning the cerebellum, has clearly shown that it appears to play a critical role in cognitive functions such as working memory, cognitive control, action observation, language, emotion, and social cognition like daily planning. 

Investigators at the Washington University employed a unique Midnight Scan Club (MSC) dataset to quantify the various connections between the cerebellum and other brain areas in order to examine the brain wiring of 10 people. Careful examination of the results showed that just 20 percent of the cerebellum was dedicated to areas involved in physical motion, while 80 percent was dedicated to areas involved in functions such as abstract thinking, planning, emotion, memory and language. It is also important to note that results of a great deal of recent studies suggest that in the evolution from simple mammals to humans, the cerebellum ten times smaller than the cerebral cortex in size but four to five times the number of neuronal cells (recent estimates of 21–26 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex, while 101 billion neurons in the cerebellum,), is acting as the brain's ultimate quality control unit, acting as a kind of editor, constantly reviewing and improving a person's thoughts and decisions and consequently makes a process smoother and faster and more accurate. In essence, this structure (the cerebellum) appears to does all this automatically, allowing our conscious mind to focus on more important work at that particular moment! Clearly, when the cerebellum isn't doing its job, the result may be a brain disorder. In fact, there is increasing evidence from a variety of fields now that psychiatric diseases from autism spectrum, schizophrenia, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, all have a link to cerebellum. Indeed, recent clinical studies had also found that dysfunction of the cerebellum is involved in the development of mental disorders, such as Schizophrenia (Moberget et al., 2018), Autism (Wang et al., 2014) and Dyslexia (study from our Haskins lab, Fulbright et al., 1999).

Together, results of a great deal of recent studies suggest that in the evolution from simple mammals to humans, the cerebellum has enlarged, like no other brain structure, with transformed functions to play a special role in the development of human intelligence. I propose that the cerebellum is acting as the brain's ultimate quality control unit, like a Professional Construction Management unit in engineering, serving as an internal model of cerebral solution plan of the problem on hand. The cerebellum doesn't directly carry out tasks like thinking, just as it doesn't directly control movement. Instead, it appears to monitor the brain areas that are doing the work, tracking the time courses of neural connectivity and make them perform better. In fact, creative cognition is recognized to involve the integration of multiple spontaneous cognitive processes and is manifested as complex networks within and between the distributed brain regions. I propose that the processing of creative cognition involves the static and dynamic re-configuration of brain networks associated with complex cognitive processes, in which precise arrangement of different functional operations in sequence is of ultimate important. Thus, timing is everything and the cerebellum is very good at time control. Let me quote the famous statement of Charalambos Kyriacou of University of Leicester concerning the circadian rhythm, “There isn’t any aspect of biology that circadian rhythms aren’t important for. They are totally fundamental.” Let me rephrase the sentence, “There isn’t any aspect of biology that temporal coding aren’t important for. They are totally fundamental” (Ovid Tzeng, CUHK, 2017). In this talk, I present a thesis arguing that the rescue of cerebellum research in brain science may represent the hopeful search for the missing link in the evolution of human intelligence. The implication is clear: we need to distinguish the secondary cognitive learning from the primary biological learning, with the recognition that the former is strongly related to the functional role of cerebellum in focus attention, divided attention, and selective attention in performing simultaneous multiple tasks.  

Concluding Remark:

Evolution of Two-Brain Theory (Ovid Tzeng)

The Old Two-Brain Theory of Neuro-cognition

Cerebral Cortex with Asymmetrical Right vs. Left Hemispheric Functions

The New Two-Brain Theory of Neuro-cognition

Cerebral Cortex (right and left hemispheres) plus Cerebellum

The Future Two-Brain Theory of Neuro-cognition

Whole Brain (cerebral cortex+cerebellum) plus Artificial Intelligence

Result:  (NI x AI x K x E) = Augmenting Intelligence 

(NI, Natural intelligence; AI, Artificial intelligence; K, Knowledge; E, Experience)

讲座二

Speaker: Tim Hunter

Title: Generalising active gap-filling

Time: 15:00 – 16:30, Wed, 8 Sep 2021  

           (Beijing, Hong Kong time)

Venue: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/779556638

            https://cuhk.zoom.cn/j/779556638