BI 066 Paul Cisek: Forward Through Evolution

April 15, 2020 01:34:11
BI 066 Paul Cisek: Forward Through Evolution
Brain Inspired
BI 066 Paul Cisek: Forward Through Evolution

Apr 15 2020 | 01:34:11

/

Show Notes

In this first part of our conversation, Paul and I discuss his approach to understanding how the brain (and intelligence) works. Namely, he believes we are fundamentally action and movement oriented - all of our behavior and cognition is based on controlling ourselves and our environment through feedback control mechanisms, and basically all neural activity should be understood through that lens. This contrasts with the view that we serially perceive the environment, make internal representations of what we perceive, do some cognition on those representations, and transform that cognition into decisions about how to move. From that premise, Paul also believes the best (and perhaps only) way to understand our current brains is by tracing out the evolutionary steps that took us from our single celled first organisms all the way to us - a process he calls phylogenetic refinement.

Other Episodes

Episode 0

October 05, 2018 01:06:25
Episode Cover

BI 012 Niko Kriegeskorte: Black Box, White Box

Mentioned in the show: Follow Niko on twitter @KriegeskorteLab. Visit his lab website. The Cognitive Computational Neuroscience Conference. The review papers we base the...

Listen

Episode 0

November 01, 2021 01:36:08
Episode Cover

BI 118 Johannes Jäger: Beyond Networks

Support the show to get full episodes and join the Discord community. Johannes (Yogi) is a freelance philosopher, researcher & educator. We discuss many...

Listen

Episode 0

August 26, 2020 02:15:38
Episode Cover

BI 082 Steve Grossberg: Adaptive Resonance Theory

Steve and I discuss his long and productive career as a theoretical neuroscientist. We cover his tried and true method of taking a large...

Listen