On March 13, 2026, the Georgia Tech Center of Excellence in Computational Cognition (CoCo) held its sesquiannual Computational Cognition Conference (CoCo Con) – an event where researchers from Georgia Tech and other Atlanta area universities working at the intersection of the mind and advanced computing to gain insights into both human cognition and artificial intelligence could come together and collaborate. Attending both as a student who is studying CoCo and someone who was documenting the event for the Institute, the conference itself was very interesting, as over 100 researchers from various disciplines, such as neuroscience, psychology, computing, mathematics, and physics, came together to share surprisingly similar research spanning across all disciplines— from exploration and avoidance in anxiety, what makes music memorable, the theory of mind in humans and machines, dynamic drift diffusion modeling, and the structure of memory for narratives – there was no shortage of interesting and insightful discussion on the inner mechanism of the mind. However, what stood out the most was how the conference ended. Ending with a panel of interdisciplinary researchers trying to define CoCo was arguably the most interesting conversation of the day, especially as a student studying and doing research within this field. This section was particularly interesting because while all of these people claimed that what they do is computational cognition, they all did distinctly different things and, therefore, none of them could similarly define computational cognition, further complicating the panel’s theme of attempting to define a clear CoCo canon.
Typically, especially in the case of STEM disciplines, researchers often don’t take into consideration that their fields arise through a defined canon, or set of literature and ideas that fundamentally define and drive their field (Easterling, Patricia E, 2015). For example, a piece of canon from a STEM field that many should be familiar with, from chemistry, for example, is the relationship between a chemist and the periodic table. Any chemist you talk to should know the periodic table, and to some extent, whether directly or indirectly, and work with it in some capacity pretty much daily. However, In the case of CoCo, a canon is much harder to define, as stated by a panelist at CoCo Con 2026, CoCo is “an interdisciplinary space trying to become a disciplinary space,” and this is what makes it challenging to articulate set boundaries or literature that define what is CoCo and what is in the same sense that the period table serves as an integral component that allows us to articulate what chemistry is.
The easiest place to start in all of this is arguably Google, as even professionals, such as the director of the GT CoCo Center of Excellence, will rely on Google sometimes – for example, to help articulate CoCo Cons’ occurrence; “sesquiannual is the word the AI gave.” As defined by Google, “computational cognition is the scientific study of the mind and its processes—such as learning, reasoning, and perception—using mathematical modeling, computer simulations, and behavioral experiments.” While this definition works, especially in the case of the research I am involved with, which is language cognition and intelligence research in a computational cognition and neuroAI lab, this definition fails to capture the full extent of what everyone at CoCo Con 2026 studies.
For example, a talk that stood out to me was from a researcher looking at the overall impact of how researchers are preparing for the ethical, social, and practical challenges that studying brain data brings – this includes the common practice of following proper IRB participant confidentiality guidelines, and open-sourcing brain data. While open-sourcing isn’t inherently a negative thing, in the case of brain data, an inherent clause arises in essentially protecting participants’ thoughts, as, while from our current knowledge, there’s no way to read inherent thoughts from neural data, as often neural data is some result of system dynamics rather than direct neural signals, there’s no telling what we could do in the future leading to an interesting predicament that is inarguably a CoCo problem.
Additionally, a possible literature base for CoCo was discussed; however, following a similar trend as in trying to define what CoCo even is, this also proved challenging due to many interesting caveats. For example, as a neuroscientist, I am familiar with and have even read some literature, such as Donald Hebb’s highly influential and fundamental 1949 book The Organization of Behavior, and while I would argue that this is a fundamental article for what I do, which is arguably CoCo, a physicist who also claims to do CoCo would most likely have little to no reason to read a book that argues the for fundamental concept in another discipline that simply states that “neurons that wire together, fire together.” Ultimately, to a physicist, the dynamics of why would matter more than the concept, so while I may consider this as canon-defining literature in regards to what I do, why should a physicist care? This idea then further brings to light the idea that while CoCo is defined as a discipline, defining what CoCo is depends on perspective and implementation rather than a coherent disciplinary problem.
Overall, while it may be challenging to define a domain such as CoCo, as articulated by a conference attendee, “in recent years, it has become very apparent to us that we have new ways to study the brain.” Whether this be through using mathematical modeling, computer simulation, or behavioral experiments, this disciplinary space is inherently interdisciplinary. Ultimately, I feel that while it would be convenient to define a canon for CoCo from a communications perspective, it might be better not to define a set canon for CoCo and let the field continue to flourish as an interdisciplinary, disciplinary space that brings together specialists from a vast array of domains to study the mind and its processes.
If you would like to read more about the event, read about it here: https://neuro.gatech.edu/computational-cognition-conference-showcases-georgia-techs-advancements-research-related-mind
References
Easterling, Patricia E, ‘canon’ (30 July 2015), in Lucy Grig (ed.), Oxford Classical Dictionary (New York, NY, online edn, Oxford Academic, 15 July 2015 – ), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.1342, accessed 3 Apr. 2026.
Hebb, D. O. (1949). The organization of behavior: A neuropsychological theory. Wiley.
