Three Controversial Hypotheses Concerning Computation in the Primate Cortex
Venue
Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI Press (2012)
Publication Year
2012
Authors
Thomas Dean, Greg Corrado, Jonathon Shlens
BibTeX
Abstract
We consider three hypotheses concerning the primate neocortex which have influenced
computational neuroscience in recent years. Is the mind modular in terms of its
being profitably described as a collection of relatively independent functional
units? Does the regular structure of the cortex imply a single algorithm at work,
operating on many different inputs in parallel? Can the cognitive differences
between humans and our closest primate relatives be explained in terms of a
scalable cortical architecture? We bring to bear diverse sources of evidence to
argue that the answers to each of these questions - with some judicious
qualifications - are in the affirmative. In particular, we argue that while our
higher cognitive functions may interact in a complicated fashion, many of the
component functions operate through well-defined interfaces and, perhaps more
important, are built on a neural substrate that scales easily under the control of
a modular genetic architecture. Processing in the primary sensory cortices seem
amenable to similar algorithmic principles, and, even for those cases where
alternative principles are at play, the regular structure of cortex allows the same
or greater advantages as the architecture scales. Similar genetic machinery to that
used by nature to scale body plans has apparently been applied to scale cortical
computations. The resulting replicated computing units can be used to build larger
working memory and support deeper recursions needed to qualitatively improve our
abilities to handle language, abstraction and social interaction.
