Best Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis

A third important aspect of the methodology of embodied cognitive science is the developmental perspective. When conceptualizing memory processes, embodied cognitive scientists do not primarily attempt to directly model the internal processes of memory. The goal of their modeling is to define the developmental and learning processes and to explain the current behavior as resulting from these processes as the individual matures and interacts with the real world. The advantage of this perspective for modeling memory processes is that fewer assumptions have to be made about internal representations. Moreover, in this way, we are forced to work out the underlying mechanisms that eventually–during development– lead to the observed behavior. Much of the work in embodied cognitive science is based on a developmental perspective. For instance, constructing robots means implementing their “memory” as self-learning systems. This means that the robots change their knowledge and “memory” automatically by interacting with the environment. As already mentioned, unlike when analyzing living organisms, the researcher is able to “look into the robot’s brain” and observe the continuous changing of its neural network interacting with its environment. In other words, the researcher can study with great precision the influence of the developmental or learning history of the robot on his internal representation (neural network).According to the findings of this kind of research, memory has therefore to be understood as a product of developmental processes in constant change (see below).

This perspective is compatible with psychoanalytic theorizing, where the developmental view is one of the underlying principles.

As described above , the analyst tried to understand the present behavior of Mr. X in connection with his biography, his idiosyncratic development. The “objective” information from Mr. X´s mother, that her baby son had suffered from an unbearable bodily state and that she had not been able to comfort him for 3 months (partly also because she had suffered from severe postnatal depression), seemed to have many analogies to the analyst’s countertransference feelings of helplessness, total insufficiency, identification with the painful psychosomatic symptoms of the analysand, and finally depression. The developmental perspective has thus, of course, additional relevance for psychoanalytic treatments, but it is beyond the scope of this paper to also describe Mr. X’s processes of change during psychoanalysis itself in detail.

From our theoretical perspective it is relevant that memories are not seen as one-to-one retrievals of certain historical events but as a continuous process of change of the whole organism in interaction with its environment; or, to put it provocatively: every single procedure for remembering modifications the actual ram, despite the fact that while doing so this process isn't an human judgements building although the intricate method towards the fantastic real truth associated with previous developing activities.

Let us take another example to further illustrate the view of an embodied memory taking account of all three of the basic theoretical topics just mentioned:

We observe the 6-month-old infant Peter taking apples and newspapers from a table. Peter puts everything in his mouth–apples and newspaper. After a while he only grasps the apples, leaving the newspapers aside. From our perspective as observers of this scene we suppose that Peter has learnt from experience and “remembers” that apples taste better then newspapers. Therefore he now prefers to taste apples. Analyzing the infant’s behavior, we (the observers) postulate that Peter selects apples by reference to his former experiences: according to the observer he has functioning memory at his disposal. We have defined memory from an “outside” perspective–observing the infant’s behavior–and not by looking into his brain (memory as a theoretical construct and frame-of-reference problem). It is an attribution to the infant as a whole (we evaluate his whole behavior), not to one part of the infant, say its brain. This means that we do not have to postulate any kind of internal representation in order to describe his behavior.

Another important observation is that the infant has developed categories: he can now differentiate between apples and newspapers (for further discussion see).