Researchers Continue Neurocognitive Modeling of Human Sensemaking in ICArUS Program

MALIBU, CA – February 24, 2012. HRL Laboratories, LLC, announced it has begun second phase work on IARPA’s Integrated Cognitive-Neuroscience Architectures for Understanding Sensemaking, or ICArUS, which seeks to model the neural processes involved in “sensemaking,” or the human ability to identify and draw relationships between sparse or ambiguous data. The goal of the program is to improve intelligence analysis.

The neurocognitive model being developed at HRL emulates human understanding with unprecedented accuracy and will become the basis for a new generation of tools to automate many intelligence analysis functions. More than that, by simulating the structure and function of underlying brain regions, the model will explain the source of cognitive biases that cause humans to err. It will predict human sensemaking performance even in new and uncertain situations. The ICArUS model already begins to explain and functionally demonstrate the origins of several cognitive biases in data analysis.

“Our modeling of the interplay between a number of cognitive functions focuses on how humans initially employ heuristics to solve problems but adapt their strategies in the face of decision-making conflicts and analysis errors,” principal investigator Dr. Rajan Bhattacharyya said. 

HRL is leading a team of university experts in this groundbreaking research, which is part of HRL’s Center for Neural and Emergent Systems (CNES).

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HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu, California (www.hrl.com) is a corporate research-and-development laboratory owned by The Boeing Company and General Motors specializing in research into sensors and materials, information and systems sciences, applied electromagnetics, and microelectronics. HRL provides custom research and development and performs additional R&D contract services for its LLC member companies, the U.S. government, and other commercial companies.

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