Dr. Howard Schneider
Howard Schneider, MD, MDPAC(C), CCFP, FCFP is a Physician at Sheppard Clinic North in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, with over 35 years of experience in mental health, psychotherapy, and artificial intelligence research.
He uniquely bridges the fields of mental health and cognitive computing, developing groundbreaking brain-inspired artificial intelligence architectures while maintaining an active medical practice focused on psychotherapy and psychopharmacology of mental health disorders.
As a Certificant of the Medical Psychotherapy Association of Canada (MDPAC) and Fellow of the College of Family Physicians of Canada (FCFP), he has established himself as a leading authority in both clinical mental health and computational neuroscience.
Howard currently maintains his medical practice at Sheppard Clinic North, where he has been providing community mental health and psychotherapy services since 1999. His practice is restricted to the specialized treatment of mental health disorders through psychotherapy and psychopharmacology. In parallel with his clinical work, he has emerged as a pioneering researcher in artificial general intelligence (AGI), developing the innovative Causal Cognitive Architecture (CCA) series.
His Navigation Map-Based Cognitive Architecture represents a new class of artificial intelligence that utilizes spatial navigation maps to represent, learn about, and operate on the world, offering a distinct path toward AGI compared to traditional neural networks or large language models. His interdisciplinary approach has resulted in significant contributions to understanding schizophrenia, consciousness, and the development of human-like artificial intelligence. Read Navigation Map-Based Artificial Intelligence and The Emergence of Compositionality in a Brain-Inspired Cognitive Architecture.
Throughout his career, Howard has achieved remarkable recognition in both medical and artificial intelligence communities. He received the prestigious 2017 Theratree Award from the Medical Psychotherapy Association of Canada, followed by the BICA Society Outstanding Research Award Diploma in 2018, and the BICA Society Best Innovative Research Award Diplomas in both 2022 and 2023 for his work on brain-inspired cognitive architectures. In 2024, he was recognized as an Elsevier Certified Peer Reviewer.
His research has been instrumental in advancing the understanding of how biological brains can inspire artificial intelligence systems, particularly in addressing complex challenges like compositionality and the neurosymbolic gap. He has developed multiple iterations of his Causal Cognitive Architecture (CCA1 through CCA8), each advancing toward human-level artificial intelligence through brain-inspired mechanisms. Read Causal Cognitive Architecture 1: Integration of Connectionist Elements into a Navigation-Based Framework and The Meaningful-Based Cognitive Architecture Model of Schizophrenia.
Howard earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Biomedical (Biomaterials) Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA. He then earned his MD CM (Medical Doctor) from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, completing his internship at Montreal General Hospital. His unique educational background, combining engineering and medicine, has been foundational to his interdisciplinary approach to both clinical practice and artificial intelligence research.
Early in his career, he worked in family practice at Centre Médical I.D.S. in Montreal from 1986 to 1995 and at MCI Walk-in Emergency Clinics in Toronto from 1996 to 1999. He also held admitting privileges in psychiatry at Cité de la Santé Hospital in Laval, Quebec, a teaching hospital affiliated with Université de Montréal, from 1986 to 1995.
Howard has held numerous leadership positions in medical and scientific organizations. He served as Chair of the Medical Psychotherapy Association of Canada from 2011 to 2013, after serving on its Board of Directors from 2008 to 2013. He was a Physician Examiner for The Medical Council of Canada LMCC Part II Clinical examination from 1994 to 2019, contributing 25 years to medical education and certification. He served on the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) Section on Primary Care Mental Health Education Committee from 2018 to 2023 and continues to serve on the MDPAC Certificant Review Committee from 2013 to present.
In the artificial intelligence community, he serves on the Program Committee for the Brain-Inspired Cognitive Architectures for Artificial Intelligence (BICAAI), the annual International Conference from 2019 to present, and joined the AGI Society AGI-25 Annual AGI Conference Program Committee in 2025.
As a prolific researcher and scholar, Howard has published extensively in both medical and artificial intelligence fields. His recent publications include groundbreaking papers on cognitive architectures, with titles such as Theory of Mind as a Core Component of Artificial General Intelligence (2025) and The Emergence of Enhanced Intelligence in a Brain-Inspired Cognitive Architecture (2024).
He serves as a peer reviewer for over 40 prestigious journals, including Cognitive Systems Research, Nature Scientific Reports, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Brain Sciences, IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, and numerous MDPI journals covering neuroscience, psychiatry, and artificial intelligence. His collaborative work includes publications with notable researchers in SPECT neuroimaging, including studies on Longitudinal SPECT Neuroimaging as an Indication of Improvement in Psychiatric Disorders, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry.
Read Alien versus Natural-like Artificial General Intelligences and Grounding Artificial General Intelligence with Robotics: The PetitCat Project.
Howard has presented his research at numerous international conferences, delivering keynote addresses and presentations on topics ranging from brain-inspired cognitive architectures to the treatment of mental health disorders. His presentations at the AGI Conference series and BICAAI conferences have been particularly influential, including his work on Simulation of Non-Primate Intelligence vs Human Intelligence vs Superhuman AGI vs Alien-like AGI presented at AGI-24 in Seattle.
He has also contributed significantly to medical education through his role in the GPPA (General Practice Psychotherapy Association) annual conferences and the Ontario Medical Association’s educational teleconference series. His interdisciplinary expertise has made him a sought-after speaker bridging the gap between neuroscience, mental health, and artificial intelligence. Read Analogical Problem Solving in a Cognitive Architecture, An Analogical Inductive Solution to the Grounding Problem, and A Brain-Inspired Cognitive Architecture (BICA) Approach to the Neurosymbolic Gap.
Howard resides in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, where he continues his dual career as a physician and AI researcher. His hobbies include exploring the history of computing, as evidenced by his visits to see historic computers, such as the Zuse computer, during his travels to psychiatry conferences.
He maintains an active interest in Human Level Artificial Intelligence (HLAI or AGI) and frequently quotes Gary Marcus’s observation that “Fooling people into thinking a program is intelligent is just not the same as building programs that actually are intelligent.” His current work focuses on developing the CCA8 architecture, which hybridizes with Large Language Models and conventional computing modules to create a fully grounded, continuously learning system with intrinsic causal reasoning, analogical reasoning, and compositional language capabilities.
Visit his Homepage, LinkedIn profile, ResearchGate profile, his publications page, and Google Scholar page. Follow him on GitHub.