Understanding Complex Systems

Higher cognition and consciousness became the objective of intensive scienti?c studiesandoftenspiriteddebatesinthe pastdecades.Thebrainhasimmenselyc- plex structure and functionality, while our understandingof its operationis yet in its infancy. Some investigators declare that higher-level cognition and consciousness are ultimately beyond the realms of human scienti?c understanding and reasoning, and research into these areas is a futile exercise. Yet, the knowledge instinct deeply rootedinhumanactivitydrivesresearcherstowardexploringthemysteriesofhuman thought. These efforts lead to the development of increasingly sophisticated sci- ti?c methods of understanding the operation of brains and the very nature of c- sciousness. The studies rely on the immense amountof experimentaldata becoming available as the result of advanced brain monitoring techniques. The experimental techniquesrequire, in turn, the developmentofnovelmethodsoftheoreticalanalysis and interpretation tools. Our work is part of these endeavors. This volume presents an in-depth overview of theoretical and experimental - proaches to cognitive dynamics and applications in designing intelligent devices. The research efforts leading to this book have started about 2 years ago when we embarked on organizing a series of special and invited sessions which took place in July 2006 at the World Congress of Computational Intelligence WCCI2006, in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. The talks covered various aspects of neurodynamics of higher-level cognitive behavior, consciousness, and modeling emotions. The main theme of this volume is the dynamics of higher cognitive functions.