Learning non-convex abstract concepts with regulated activation networks: A hybrid and evolving computational modeling approach.

Perceivable objects are customarily termed as concepts and their representations (localist-distributed, modality-specific, or experience-dependent) are ingrained in our lives. Despite a considerable amount of computational modeling research focuses on concrete concepts, no comprehensible method for abstract concepts has hitherto been considered. Abstract concepts can be viewed as a blend of concrete concepts. We use this view in our proposed model, Regulated Activation Network (RAN), by learning representations of non-convex abstract concepts without supervision via a hybrid model that has an evolving topology. First, we describe the RAN's modeling process through a Toy-data problem yielding a performance of 98.5%(ca.) in a classification task. Second, RAN's model is used to infer psychological and physiological biomarkers from students' active and inactive states using sleep-detection data. The RAN's capability of performing classification is shown using five UCI benchmarks, with the best outcome of 96.5% (ca.) for Human Activity recognition data. We empirically demonstrate the proposed model using standard performance measures for classification and establish RAN's competency with five classifiers. We show that the RAN adeptly performs classification with a small amount of data and simulate cognitive functions like activation propagation and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]