Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA) are computational frameworks for building intelligent agents that are inspired by biological intelligence. Biological intelligent systems, notable animals such as humans, have many qualities that are often lacking in artificially designed systems including robustness, flexibility, and adaptability to environments. At a point in time where visibility into naturally intelligent systems is exploding thanks to modern brain imaging and recording techniques, our ability to learn from nature and to build biologically inspired intelligent systems has never been greater. At the same time, the growth in computer science and technology has unleashed enough computational power, that an explosion of intelligent applications from augmented reality to intelligent virtual agents is now certain. The growth in these fields challenges the computational replication of all essential aspects of the human mind (the BICA Challenge), an endeavor that is interdisciplinary in nature and promises to yield a bi-directional flow of understanding between all involved disciplines. Continue reading…