In this article, the author presents a new methodology for the study of two fundamental components of consciousness, that is thought and language. The fundamental presupposition that forms the basis of this methodology is that thought is not simply a passive "reflection" of an external "reality", but also (and especially) something active, i.e. that the fundamental components of thought are sequences of operations, amongst which the ones of attention play a key role. These sequences of elementary mental operations are called mental categories, and are the meanings of all the words that do not seem to indicate something physical (first of all, all the "grammatical" words, that is conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns, fundamental verbs like "to be", "to have" etc., the main adverbs, and, in the large number of languages that have a more or less rich morphology, all morphemes (the ones which indicate cases, in languages that have cases, the number and the gender of nouns and adjectives, moods and tenses of the verb etc.). The author proposes a list of these elementary mental operations and he shows how it is possible, basing ourselves on them, to identify the meanings of these words, which are indispensable for any linguistic expression. The author also mentions a possible short-term practical application of these theories, i.e. a device in order to improve the quality of machine translation. He also formulates the hypothesis that these theories could allow us to look in a new way at the problem of the (partial) artificial reproduction of the human activity of thought and language.

Despite allowing for the unprecedented visualization of brain functional activity, modern neurobiological techniques have not yet been able to provide satisfactory answers to important questions about the relationship between brain and mind. The aim of this paper is to show how two different but complementary approaches, Mind Operational Semantics (OS) and Brain Operational Architectonics (OA), can help bridge the gap between a specific kind of mental activity—the higher-order reflective thought or linguistic thought—and brain. The fundamental notion that allows the two different approaches to be jointly used under a common framework is that of operation. According to OS, which is based on introspection and linguistic data, the meanings of words can be analyzed in terms of elemental mental operations (EOMC), amongst which those of attention play a key role. Linguistic thought is made possible by special kinds of elements, which OS calls “correlators”, which have the function of tying together the other elements of thought, which OS calls “correlata” (a "correlational network” that is, a sentence, is so formed). Therefore, OS conceives of linguistic thought as a hierarchy of operations of increasing complexity. Likewise, according to OA, which is based on the joint analysis of cognitive and electromagnetic data (EEG and MEG), every conscious phenomenon is brought to existence by the joint operations of many functional and transient neuronal assemblies in the brain. According to OA, the functioning of the brain is always operational (made up of operations), and its structure is characterized by a hierarchy of operations of increasing complexity: single neurons, single assemblies of neurons, synchronized neuronal assemblies or Operational Modules (OM), integrated or complex OMs. The authors put forward the hypothesis that the whole level of OS’s description (EOMC, correlators, and correlational networks) corresponds to the level of OMs (or set of them) of different complexity within OA’s theory: EOMC could correspond to simple OMs, correlators to complex OMs and the correlational network to a set of simple and complex OMs. Finally, a set of experiments is proposed to verify the putative correspondence between OS and OA and prove the existence of an integrated continuum between brain and mind.

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Abstract:This article is an extremely brief introduction to a new theory in the philosophy of language, called Operational Linguistics (OL). OL deals mainly with the semantics of grammatical elements (adpositions/cases, conjunctions, verbs such as to be and to have, modal verbs, numerals, quantity-related, demonstrative and interrogative-relative pronouns/adjectives, main adverbs, negative, interrogative etc.) and terms ("subject", "object", "noun", "verb" etc.), and is based on the fundamental presupposition that their meaning is mainly given by operations within cognitive functions, amongst which those of attention play a key role. Therefore, the meaning of grammatical elements and terms is defined in extra linguistic terms, i. e., based on something other than language. The theory is unitary, in that it accounts for all the grammatical elements and terms on the basis of the same (few) theoretical presuppositions.

Wide-field retinal fundus cameras are commercially available devices that allow acquiring videos of a wide area of infants' eye, considered of clinical interest in screening for ROP (Retinopathy of Prematurity). Many frames of the video are often altered by defects such as artifacts, interlacing and defocus, which make critical and time consuming the search and choice of the good frames to be analyzed. We developed a computerized system that automatically selects the best still frames from the video and builds a mosaic from these images. It will allow clinicians to examine a single large, best quality image. The best frames are identified using several image quality parameters that measure sharpness and steadiness, and then registered to obtain a single mosaic image. A custom blending procedure is then applied in order to provide a final image with homogeneous luminosity and contrast, devoid of the dark areas typically present in the outer regions of single frames. The best-frame selection module showed a PPV of 0.92, while the visual inspection of resulting mosaics confirmed the remarkable capability of the proposed system to provide higher quality images.