Modelling Dynamics of Cognitive Control in Action Formation with Intention, Attention, and Awareness

Human action formation primarily concerns automatic brain processes that are responsive to a salient stimulus. Nevertheless, the importance of studying the control of these actions to obtain more flexible and self-regulated behaviours under the intervention of top-down related processes has been noted. In this paper a top-down guided action formation based on automatic pathways with the cognitive states intention, attention, and awareness has been modelled. By simulations the validity of the model has been explored. This model will be used in scrutinizing the interplay among conscious and unconscious processes in clinical disorders, as a workbench for cognitive scientists, and in agent-based applications for healthy lifestyle, and complex systems that involve human cognition.