title: The feeling of understanding: an exploration with neural models.
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.
authors.affiliation: Group of Cognitive Systems Modeling, Biophysics Section, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República, Iguá 4225, 11400 Montevideo, Uruguay.
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mizraji
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Washington College, Chestertown, MD 21620 USA.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lin
keywords: Dynamic neural models; Feeling of understanding; Knowledge networks; Neural vectors