A model of a middle level of cognition based on the interaction among the thalamus, amygdala, and the cortex

How the cognitive capabilities of humans are mapped on the underlying computational framework is far to be completely understood. Despite it is an open problem, some evidences show that the interaction among the cortex, the amygdala and the thalamus is involved in the composition of elementary behaviours to solve complex tasks. The cortex is well-known to have a certain degree of plasticity to categorise the processed information whereas the other two brain areas are involved in the association of an emotional state to the incoming sensory information. In the specific, the amygdala is involved in the generation of innate affective states whereas the thalamus deals with the developing of new goals. The interaction among these three brain structures plays an important role in the emerging of a middle level of cognition. We claim that the cognitive model could fill the gap between the high-level reasoning and low level sensory-motor coordination. In this paper, firstly we model the above mentioned brain areas and second we investigate the interaction of these areas, producing a goal-generating architecture. Finally, the goal-generating system is tested on a NAO robot, in order to validate and extend some previously published results.