The destructive competition hypothesis views the brain as a system with finite processing resources, where new cognitive functions compete with evolutionary older ones for cortical space. In contrast, our combined neuroimaging and behavioral evidence points to a different conclusion: The human brain has the remarkable capacity to accommodate new cultural skills, such as reading, while simultaneously enhancing related preexisting abilities, such as face recognition. Rather than impairing older functions, reading acquisition appears to support and refine them.

Stuttering and Parkinson’s disease (PD) manifest in altered motor control, apparent in speech and walking. Both disorders display untimely initiation or termination of motor commands. Stuttering symptoms include blockades, sound and syllable repetitions, and prolongations that can severely interrupt the rhythmic flow of speech. PD is associated with dysfunctional gait and balance, and freezing episodes, hindering the regular rhythm of walking. These rhythmic alterations span across motor effectors and extend to rhythm perception. In this chapter we examine the hypothesis that in both populations, motor deficits are underpinned by alterations within a general-purpose timing system that sustains rhythmic behavior via temporal predictions. We focus on similarities between stuttering and PD in terms of impaired rhythm mechanisms and on the associated neuronal circuitries. We provide new insights into how rhythm in speech relates to nonverbal functions and how this knowledge can inform us about rhythm-based interventions.

Data from auditory neuroscience provide a novel "oscillatory hierarchy" perspective on how the brain encodes speech. Temporal sampling theory, originally proposed to provide a conceptual framework to explain why acoustic rhythmic impairments in children with developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder lead to phonological and syntactic impairments, can also explain why sensitivity to linguistic rhythm is a key factor in language acquisition. An overview of the theory is provided, and then data from two longitudinal infant projects applying temporal sampling theory to language acquisition are discussed. One project followed infants at family risk (or not at risk) for developmental dyslexia from age five months, and one followed typically developing infants from age two months. The infant data suggest that neural oscillatory mechanisms, along with acoustic rhythm sensitivity, play key roles in early language acquisition.

Traditional dialog agents in conversational information seeking have repeatedly focused on entities in the user query (Rao and Daumé III, 2018; Zamani et al., 2020). Consequently, the generated questions are redundant and lack diversity, losing user engagement.

We portray processes theories which claim that consciousness is related to or identical with a computational process in the brain. The global workspace theory (GWT) proposes that consciousness occurs when information is made widely available via a global neuronal workspace. Higher order theories (HOTs) propose that consciousness occurs when there is a higher-order process that describes a first-order sensory-cognitive process. We will also introduce the ‘small network argument’, which holds that extremely simple systems may fulfil the criteria of process theories and hence would be considered conscious.

Process knowledge is an ordered set of information that maps to evidencebased guidelines or categories of conceptual understanding to experts in a domain. For instance, The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) develops clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) that serve as a framework for clinical decisions and supporting best practices. CPGs allow systematic assessment to optimize patient care. In addition, the US Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) develop dietary guidelines for Americans that serve as a recommendation for meeting nutrient needs, promoting health, and preventing disease. An AI system adapted to process knowledge can handle uncertainty in prediction, and the predicted outcomes are safe and user-level explainable. Further, an AI system can consider process knowledge as meta-information to capture the sequential context necessary for carrying out a structured conversation. Also, it allows the developer of the AI system to probe its internal decision making using application-specific guidelines or specifications that inform the synchrony between the end-user’s thought process and the model’s functioning.

Chapter 8 examines practical tools for meeting the challenges of the post-truth era. These tools focus on two broad goals: (1) cultivating wise consumers of online information and (2) fostering wise deliberative spaces, both in face-to-face communities and online. The chapter begins by addressing online misinformation and algorithmic bias, highlighting interventions such as accuracy prompts, lateral reading strategies, and misinformation-focused games, as well as the potential of crowdsourcing and new conceptions of scientific literacy. It then turns to strategies for creating more deliberative spaces, both in face-to-face settings and online. Examples are given of localized social media, electronic democracy platforms, and online tools aimed at reducing political polarization. It is argued that such initiatives, while promising, require significant expansion. The final section considers the role of schools in building the skills and dispositions essential for civic reasoning and dialogue, with attention to identity formation, moral development, digital citizenship, and classroom climates that support deliberative dialogue.

A hallmark of wise deliberative spaces is their commitment to truth-seeking, in contrast to “post-truth” contexts where emotional appeals and personal beliefs are more important than objective facts. Chapter 5 explores how post-truth thinking has been fueled by cognitive elites across the political spectrum and traces its roots to postmodernist ideas. The chapter reviews philosophical definitions of truth, contrasting idealist and coherentist views with realist theories, specifically correspondence, semantic, and pragmatic approaches. It draws on Hilary Putnam’s concept of natural realism to argue that objective truths do exist – depending on the domain of inquiry – but only if we distinguish between what is true and what is merely believed to be true. Postpositivism supports this by recognizing an external reality while acknowledging that our knowledge is fallible and evolving. Biases, though inevitable, can be countered through reflexive and communal inquiry. Ultimately, the chapter argues that wisdom lies in understanding the nature of different kinds of inquiry – scientific, moral, or otherwise – without falling into the trap of relativism.

Much linguistic research into the perception of rhythmic structure in speech has been concerned with temporal domains that may show isochronous or at least somewhat regular timing. Early studies discovered that there is a substantial discrepancy between the physical and the subjectively perceived onsets of speech events such as words or syllables. Sequences of alternating speech units tend to be perceived as irregularly timed if the intervening pause duration is kept constant. This peculiarity of speech perception is commonly referred to as the perceptual center effect (or the P-center). Since its discovery, the effect has been defeating all quantification attempts as the P-center does not seem to consistently coincide with any specific acoustic markers of speech signals, though it is generally agreed that the P-center represents the rhythmic beat in speech. This chapter reviews existing evidence, outlines future directions, and discusses the domain of beat perception in spoken language.

In Chapters Two and Three, we learned about the experimental tools for investigating consciousness and about its characteristics. We are now ready to delve into the realm of theories proposed to explain consciousness.

The timing of acoustic events in relation to different levels of structure building is a fundamental task in both language and music. While in music the timing of sounds and their relation to an abstract metrical grid is often used to create aesthetic effects, timing relations in language are commonly grammaticalized for the conventional construction of different levels of meaning, leaving only a narrow margin for rhythmic preferences of other sorts. Our chapter reviews functions of timing, and, specifically, metrical structure, in both music and language, suggests a unified form of representation inspired by autosegmental-metrical phonology and thereby directs the attention to principles of time-related structure building that are relevant for both communicative sound systems.

We introduce the two major branches of research on consciousness: state consciousness and content consciousness. We review and critically discuss the many empirical paradigms that are used in consciousness research, including visual masking, binocular rivalry, and anesthesia.