Emotions and music through an innovative project during compulsory secondary education.

This article presents the results and main conclusions of a quasi-experimental study after the implementation of an innovative project extended as a multi-year programme, called 'MusMotion', applied in compulsory secondary education, which is based on the relationship between music and emotions, as well as its effects on the academic performance of adolescents. The research analysed and tested an educational innovation project that improves students' academic performance, as well as the classroom climate between teachers and students (N = 444). A key strand of this research concerns the use of music to support students' emotional development and awareness. As we will explain, the results of this research have shown positive outcomes that have direct implications for pedagogy and classroom practice. The results confirm that there is a relationship between emotions and students' academic performance, and the innovative educational programme MusMotion can help to improve students' academic performance and the classroom climate by improving their state of mind. Educational systems, through the management of emotions via music, could help many children who today may have difficulty with their emotions.

Distributed, layered and reliable computing nets to represent neuronal receptive fields.

Receptive fields of retinal and other sensory neurons show a large variety of spatiotemporal linear and non linear types of responses to local stimuli. In visual neurons, these responses present either asymmetric sensitive zones or center-surround organization. In most cases, the nature of the responses suggests the existence of a kind of distributed computation prior to the integration by the final cell which is evidently supported by the anatomy. We describe a new kind of discrete and continuous filters to model the kind of computations taking place in the receptive fields of retinal cells. To show their performance in the analysis of different non-trivial neuron-like structures, we use a computer tool specifically programmed by the authors to that effect. This tool is also extended to study the effect of lesions on the whole performance of our model nets.

Remarks on neurocybernetics and its links to computing science. To the memory of Prof. Luigi M. Ricciardi.

This paper explores the origins and content of neurocybernetics and its links to artificial intelligence, computer science and knowledge engineering. Starting with three remarkable pieces of work, we center attention on a number of events that initiated and developed basic topics that are still nowadays a matter of research and inquire, from goal directed activity theories to circular causality and to reverberations and learning. Within this context, we pay tribute to the memory of Prof. Ricciardi documenting the importance of his contributions in the mathematics of brain, neural nets and neurophysiological models, computational simulations and techniques.

On the legacy of W.S. McCulloch.

In this paper, we review McCulloch's legacy, from his early work in neurophysiology, and its relationship to his philosophical quest for an 'experimental epistemology' to his role in the cybernetics movement during the 1940s and 1950s and his contributions to the development of computer science and communication theory. There are three parts in chronological sequence. First, the period up to his work at Yale University with Dusser de Barenne, where he concentrated on the experimental study of the functional organization of sensory cortex. Second, the time of his Psychiatric Chair at the University of Chicago and the organization of the Macy Foundation Conferences. To this period corresponds the genesis and publication of the most influential and quoted work by McCulloch and Pitts: A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Neurons Activity. Third, the period of his research activity at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology where he, Lettvin, Maturana and Pitts produced epochmaking papers on epistemological neurophysiology, the modelling of the reticular formation and other work with da Fonseca and Moreno-Díaz. We finally refer to the International Conference that took place in McCulloch's memory at the 25th anniversary of his death. Our main conclusion is that McCulloch's writings are still a source of inspiration from neurophysiology to artificial intelligence and robotics.