Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, December 11, 2017, 15:28 (2539 days ago) @ David Turell

An article reviews studies of the brain as decisions are made. The approach is purely materialism as consciousness in its active role is not discussed:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/a-new-collaborative-approach-to-investigate-what-hap...

"Decisions span a vast range of complexity. There are really simple ones: Do I want an apple or a piece of cake with my lunch? Then there are much more complicated ones: Which car should I buy, or which career should I choose?

"Neuroscientists like me have identified some of the individual parts of the brain that contribute to making decisions like these. Different areas process sounds, sights or pertinent prior knowledge. But understanding how these individual players work together as a team is still a challenge, not only in understanding decision-making, but for the whole field of neuroscience.

***

"Individual neuroscience labs have already uncovered a lot about how particular brain areas contribute to decision-making.

"Say you’re choosing between an apple or a piece of cake to go with lunch. First, you need to know that apples and cake are the two options. That requires action from brain areas that process sensory information – your eyes see the apple’s bright red skin, while your nose takes in the sweet smell of cake.

"Those sensory areas often connect to what we call association areas. Researchers have traditionally thought they play a role in putting different pieces of information together. By collating information from the eyes, the ears and so on, the association areas may give a more coherent, big-picture view of what’s happening in the world.

"And why choose one action over another? That’s a question for the brain’s reward circuitry, which is critical in weighing the value of different options. You know that the cake will taste sweetly delicious now, but you might regret it when you’re heading to the gym later.

"Then, there’s the frontal cortex, which is believed to play a role in controlling voluntary action. Research suggests it’s involved in committing to a particular action once enough incoming information has arrived. It’s the part of the brain that might tell you the piece of cake smells so good that it’s worth all of the calories.

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"At first pass, the setup we’re using for the International Brain Laboratory doesn’t look very natural at all. The mouse has a little device that it uses to report decisions – it’s actually a wheel from a Lego set. For example, it might learn that when it sees an image of a vertical grating and turns the wheel until the image is centered, it gets a reward. If you think about what foraging is – exploring the environment, trying to find rewards, making use of sensory signals and prior knowledge – this simple Lego wheel activity does capture its essence.

"We really had to think about the trade-off between having a behavior that was complex enough to give us insight into interesting neural computations, and one that was simple enough that it could be implemented in the same way in many different experimental laboratories. The balance we struck was a decision-making task that starts simple and becomes more and more complex as an individual animal achieves different stages of training.

"Even in the simplest, very earliest stage we’re looking at, where the animals are just making voluntary movements, they’re deciding when to make a movement to harvest a reward. I’m sure we can go much further, but even if that’s as far as we get, having neural measurements from all over the brain during a simple behavior like this will be very interesting. We don’t know how it happens in the brain that you decide when to take a particular action and how to execute that action. Having neural measurements from all over the brain of what happened just before the animal spontaneously decided to go and get a reward will be a huge step forward." (my bold)

Comment: An entirely mechanistic approach to the brain as a mechanical computer. It will not tell us how consciousness appears or works. Just how the brain responds to the thoughts that are developed by consciousness in charge of the brain.