Cognitive Systems Research is dedicated to the study of human-level cognition. As such, it welcomes papers which advance the understanding, design and applications of cognitive and intelligent systems, both natural and artificial.

The journal brings together a broad community studying cognition in its many facets in vivo and in silico, across the developmental spectrum, focusing on individual capacities or on entire architectures. It aims to foster debate and integrate ideas, concepts, constructs, theories, models and techniques from across different disciplines and different perspectives on human-level cognition. The scope of interest includes the study of cognitive capacities and architectures - both brain-inspired and non-brain-inspired - and the application of cognitive systems to real-world problems as far as it offers insights relevant for the understanding of cognition.

Cognitive Systems Research therefore welcomes mature and cutting-edge research approaching cognition from a systems-oriented perspective, both theoretical and empirically-informed, in the form of original manuscripts, short communications, opinion articles, systematic reviews, and topical survey articles from the fields of Cognitive Science (including Philosophy of Cognitive Science), Artificial Intelligence/Computer Science, Cognitive Robotics, Developmental Science, Psychology, and Neuroscience and Neuromorphic Engineering. Empirical studies will be considered if they are supplemented by theoretical analyses and contributions to theory development and/or computational modelling studies. Note that the journal does not publish clinical and medical papers. We also do not publish pure machine learning papers, e.g. studies proposing variants of classifiers or pure algorithmic improvements that bear no connection to cognitive systems research in the sense above.

Additionally, Cognitive Systems Research plays a special role in fostering and promoting the 'BICA Challenge' to create a real-life computational equivalent of the human mind by devoting two special issues to BICA AI (Brain-Inspired Cognitive Architectures for Artificial Intelligence) related topics each year.

Special Issue on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures for Artificial Intelligence
Submission Date: 2024-12-15

There is an emergent consensus among AI researchers that the future of AI is in interacting with humans socially and fluidly. Indeed, in the last few years new technologies like Large Language Models (LLM) produced an impressive leap in this direction. Yet, LLM have severe limitations in many directions, including socially emotional intelligence, commonsense reasoning, context understanding, to name just a few. The time has come for AI to tap cognitive principles from biology. Biological intelligent systems, notably humans, have many qualities that are often lacking in artificially designed systems including robustness, flexibility, and adaptability to social contexts. Their believability and explainability of behavior, their level of empathy and trustworthiness are unmatched by the state-of-the-art AI systems. At the same time, the growth in computer science and technology has unleashed enough computational power, that an explosion of many forms of AI, including socially intelligent systems is inevitable. This special issue will promote, facilitate, and integrate studies from many disciplines, unified by the challenge of computational replication of the human mind in its highest cognitive abilities. This endeavor, known as the BICA Challenge, is interdisciplinary in nature. It calls on studies in a broad spectrum of areas, including Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Modeling, Neuromorphic Engineering, Neuroscience, Psychology, Ethics, and more.

Guest editors:

Alexei Samsonovich, PhD
National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Moscow, Russian Federation
AVSamsonovich@mephi.ru
(Affective Cognitive Modeling, Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures, Socially Emotional Artificial Intelligence, Multimodal Human-Computer Interface)

Tingting Liu, PhD
College of Science and Technology, Ningbo University, Cixi, China
liutingting@nbu.edu.cn
(Embodied Agents, Virtual Reality, Ethical Issues in Artificial Intelligence, Human-Computer Interaction, Serious Games)

Zhen Liu, PhD
Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
liuzhen@nbu.edu.cn
(Embodied Agents, Virtual Reality, Affective Computing, Human-Computer Interaction, Serious Games)

Manuscript submission information:

The journal's submission platform (Editorial Manager®) is now open for submissions to this Special Issue. Please refer to the Guide for Authors to prepare your manuscript and select the article type of “VSI: BICA*AI” when submitting your manuscript online. Both the Guide for Authors and the submission portal could be found on the Journal Homepage: Guide for authors - Cognitive Systems Research - ISSN 1389-0417 | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier.

Timeline:

Submission Open Date *15/05/2024
Final Manuscript Submission Deadline *15/12/2024
Editorial Acceptance Deadline *15/03/2025

Keywords:

    BICA
    Cognitive Modeling
    Social Intelligent Agents
    Affective Conversational Agents
    Artificial Emotional Intelligence
    LLM-Based Agents
    Embodied Emotional Cognition
    Serious Games
    Believable Virtual Actors
    Ethical AI
    Strong AI
    Artificial General Intelligence
    Artificial Superintelligence