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Conference on nonlinear dynamics in cognitive research opens in Nizhny Novgorod

otkrylas konferenciya nelinejnaya dinamika v kognitivnyh issledovaniyah

On August 21, the 8th All-Russian Conference with international participation "Nonlinear Dynamics in Cognitive Research" opened in the conference hall of the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The conference is traditionally widely represented by the key institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences  and leading universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, as well as the science centres in Pushchino, Novosibirsk and Tomsk. The event brought together more than one hundred Russian and foreign researchers from different fields of science, and the conference program includes more than 70 reports.

It was opened by a lecture of Tatyana Chernigovskaya, psycholinguist and popularizer of science, professor of St. Petersburg State University, entitled "Consciousness and the Possibilities of its Experimental Study". She noted in her presentation that at the moment experimental sciences studying higher functions - memory, consciousness, communication – are facing a crisis.

"There are a lot of facts, but it is not clear what to do with them, how to analyze them. It is obvious that some other approach is needed. That's why we go to conferences to create a professional environment, an environment for dialog and discussion of acute issues. It is conferences like this that create a working atmosphere. This is a necessary nourishing environment, and mankind has not yet invented anything else," said Tatyana Chernigovskaya.

This year's conference "Nonlinear Dynamics in Cognitive Research" is honouring the memory of neurophysiologist Alexander Zeveke. He was the founder of the Nizhny Novgorod school of neurocybernetics and the renowned Nizhny Novgorod school of neurophysiology.

"Alexander Zeveke was one of the first to combine in his experiments the achievements of physics, mathematics and biology, thus obtaining a powerful tool for objective measurement of subjective functions. He used this tool successfully, eventually disproving one of the most odious hypotheses of cognitive science about functional specialization of tactile receptors. Ten years have passed since his death, but the department still receives messages from the editors of the world's leading journals with a request to "Dr. Zeveke" to submit a full-length article on the details of his - now recognized - theory," shared Sergei Parin, deputy chairman of the conference organizing committee, professor of the UNN Department of Psychophysiology.

otkrylas konferenciya nelinejnaya dinamika v kognitivnyh issledovaniyah 1

"It is obvious that cognitive science is the modern natural philosophy: it explores the laws of nature, not only material nature, but also immaterial nature - the nature of mind, the nature of cognition. Here we need associations of humanitarians, physicists, mathematicians and biologists. The conference is just a platform for such an association: there is an opportunity to search for general laws of nature, which concern not only atoms, not only molecules, but also the human mind, emotions, behaviour. 20 years ago, the Interregional Association of Cognitive Studies (IACS) was established in Russia and a congress was organized to unite all cognitive scientists of the country. Our conference became a satellite conference. Every two years there is a congress, and between congresses we have our conference. Practically all the congress participants representing the most topical areas of cognitive science get together at our conference that follows the congress", said Sofia Polevaya, Head of the Department of Psychophysiology at the UNN Faculty of Social Sciences.

The conference will run until August 25, 2023. The detailed program is available on the conference website.