Mapping the mind with words
Sidarta Ribeiro | Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazil | [email protected]
Graph analysis provides a particularly useful tool for the computational phenotyping of verbal or written reports, constituting a fast and low-cost tool for the evaluation of discourse structure. In the past few years we have successfully applied graph analysis to the differential diagnosis of psychosis, to sort Alzheimer’s disease from mild cognitive impairment, to track the cognitive gains of healthy children undergoing alphabetization, and to compare all these data to literary texts from the past 5,000 years. The applicability of the method extends far beyond psychiatry, reaching the various mental realms induced by sleep and dream states, mood and attention variations, meditation, psychoactive substances and psychiatric and neurological diseases. The method also has potential to reveal new perspectives on talking, reading and, most importantly, learning. The possibility to structurally compare verbal reports of subjects across the world, from a range of ages, socio-economic status, and cultures, with ancient and current texts, provides a broad perspective that is simply unprecedented.
Sidarta Ribeiro | Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazil | [email protected]
Graph analysis provides a particularly useful tool for the computational phenotyping of verbal or written reports, constituting a fast and low-cost tool for the evaluation of discourse structure. In the past few years we have successfully applied graph analysis to the differential diagnosis of psychosis, to sort Alzheimer’s disease from mild cognitive impairment, to track the cognitive gains of healthy children undergoing alphabetization, and to compare all these data to literary texts from the past 5,000 years. The applicability of the method extends far beyond psychiatry, reaching the various mental realms induced by sleep and dream states, mood and attention variations, meditation, psychoactive substances and psychiatric and neurological diseases. The method also has potential to reveal new perspectives on talking, reading and, most importantly, learning. The possibility to structurally compare verbal reports of subjects across the world, from a range of ages, socio-economic status, and cultures, with ancient and current texts, provides a broad perspective that is simply unprecedented.