Category Archives: Psycho-physiological Bases Of Engineering

A possible explanation for the formation of concepts in the human brain

May 8, 2025 11:09 ,

Luca D. Kolibius, Sheena A. Josselyn, Simon Hanslmayr, On the origin of memory neurons in the human hippocampus, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 29, Issue 5, 2025, Pages 421-433 10.1016/j.tics.2025.01.013.

The hippocampus is essential for episodic memory, yet its coding mechanism remains debated. In humans, two main theories have been proposed: one suggests that concept neurons represent specific elements of an episode, while another posits a conjunctive code, where index neurons code the entire episode. Here, we integrate new findings of index neurons in humans and other animals with the concept-specific memory framework, proposing that concept neurons evolve from index neurons through overlapping memories. This process is supported by engram literature, which posits that neurons are allocated to a memory trace based on excitability and that reactivation induces excitability. By integrating these insights, we connect two historically disparate fields of neuroscience: engram research and human single neuron episodic memory research.

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On the problem of choice overload for human cognition

May 8, 2025 11:06 ,

Jessie C. Tanner, Claire T. Hemingway, Choice overload and its consequences for animal decision-making, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 29, Issue 5, 2025, Pages 403-406 10.1016/j.tics.2025.01.003.

Animals routinely make decisions with important consequences for their survival and reproduction, but they frequently make suboptimal decisions. Here, we explore choice overload as one reason why animals may make suboptimal decisions, arguing that choice overload may have important ecological and evolutionary consequences, and propose future directions.

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When to rely on memories versus sampling sensory information anew to guide behavior

April 3, 2025 06:41 ,

Levi Kumle, Anna C. Nobre, Dejan Draschkow, Sensorimnemonic decisions: choosing memories versus sensory information, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 29, Issue 4, 2025, Pages 311-313, 10.1016/j.tics.2024.12.010.

We highlight a fundamental psychological function that is central to many of our interactions in the environment – when to rely on memories versus sampling sensory information anew to guide behavior. By operationalizing sensorimnemonic decisions we aim to encourage and advance research into this pivotal process for understanding how memories serve adaptive cognition.

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On the innate ability of vertebrates for number recognition and the one of distinguishing ratios of numbers

March 6, 2025 10:33 ,

Elena Lorenzi, Dmitry Kobylkov, Giorgio Vallortigara, Is there an innate sense of number in the brain?, Cerebral Cortex, Volume 35, Issue 2, February 2025, DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhaf004.

The approximate number system or «sense of number» is a crucial, presymbolic mechanism enabling animals to estimate quantities, which is essential for survival in various contexts (eg estimating numerosities of social companions, prey, predators, and so on). Behavioral studies indicate that a sense of number is widespread across vertebrates and invertebrates. Specific brain regions such as the intraparietal sulcus and prefrontal cortex in primates, or equivalent areas in birds and fish, are involved in numerical estimation, and their activity is modulated by the ratio of quantities. Data gathered across species strongly suggest similar evolutionary pressures for number estimation pointing to a likely common origin, at least across vertebrates. On the other hand, few studies have investigated the origins of the sense of number. Recent findings, however, have shown that numerosity-selective neurons exist in newborn animals, such as domestic chicks and zebrafish, supporting the hypothesis of an innateness of the approximate number system. Control-rearing experiments on visually naïve animals further support the notion that the sense of number is innate and does not need any specific instructive experience in order to be triggered.

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It seems that the human brain working memory uses pointers

March 6, 2025 10:21 ,

Edward Awh, Edward K. Vogel, Working memory needs pointers, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 29, Issue 3, 2025, Pages 230-241, DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2024.12.006.

Cognitive neuroscience has converged on a definition of working memory (WM) as a capacity-limited system that maintains highly accessible representations via stimulus-specific neural patterns. We argue that this standard definition may be incomplete. We highlight the fundamental need to recognize specific instances or tokens and to bind those tokens to the surrounding context. We propose that contextual binding is supported by spatiotemporal ‘pointers’ and that pointers are the source of neural signals that track the number of stored items, independent of their content. These content-independent pointers may provide a productive perspective for understanding item-based capacity limits in WM and the role of WM as a gateway for long-term storage.

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On the two-ways of learning language in humans: both abstracting detailed knowledge and refining still-only-abstract one

January 9, 2025 16:38 ,

Susan Goldin-Meadow, Inbal Arnon, Whole-to-part development in language creation, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 29, Issue 1, 2025, Pages 12-14, DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2024.09.015.

Children approach language by learning parts and constructing wholes. But they can also first learn wholes and then discover parts. We demonstrate this understudied yet impactful process in children creating language without input. Whole-to-part learning thus need not be driven by hard-to-segment input and is a bias that children bring to language.

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On the limited throughput of the human cognition and its implications, e.g., in Engineering

December 19, 2024 11:49 ,

Jieyu Zheng1, and Markus Meister, The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?, Neuron (2024), DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.11.008.

This article is about the neural conundrum behind the slowness of human behavior. The information throughput of a human being is about 10 bits/s. In comparison, our sensory systems gather data at 10 bits/s. The stark contrast between these numbers remains unexplained and touches on fundamental aspects of brain function: what neural substrate sets this speed limit on the pace of our existence? Why does the brain need billions of neurons to process 10 bits/s? Why can we only think about one thing at a time? The brain seems to operate in two distinct modes: the ‘‘outer’’ brain handles fast high-dimensional sensory and motor signals, whereas the ‘‘inner’’ brain processes the reduced few bits needed to control behavior. Plausible explanations exist for the large neuron numbers in the outer brain, but not for the inner brain, and we propose new research directions to remedy this.

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A good review of allostasis and control theory applied to physiology

November 21, 2024 12:33 ,

Eli Sennesh, Jordan Theriault, Dana Brooks, Jan-Willem van de Meent, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Karen S. Quigley, Interoception as modeling, allostasis as control, Biological Psychology, Volume 167, 2022 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108242.

The brain regulates the body by anticipating its needs and attempting to meet them before they arise – a process called allostasis. Allostasis requires a model of the changing sensory conditions within the body, a process called interoception. In this paper, we examine how interoception may provide performance feedback for allostasis. We suggest studying allostasis in terms of control theory, reviewing control theory’s applications to related issues in physiology, motor control, and decision making. We synthesize these by relating them to the important properties of allostatic regulation as a control problem. We then sketch a novel formalism for how the brain might perform allostatic control of the viscera by analogy to skeletomotor control, including a mathematical view on how interoception acts as performance feedback for allostasis. Finally, we suggest ways to test implications of our hypotheses.

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An inspiring formalization of the latest models of human emotions into RL

September 19, 2024 17:09 ,

Aviv Emanuel, Eran Eldar, Emotions as Computations, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Volume 144, January 2023 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104977.

Emotions ubiquitously impact action, learning, and perception, yet their essence and role remain widely debated. Computational accounts of emotion aspire to answer these questions with greater conceptual precision informed by normative principles and neurobiological data. We examine recent progress in this regard and find that emotions may implement three classes of computations, which serve to evaluate states, actions, and uncertain prospects. For each of these, we use the formalism of reinforcement learning to offer a new formulation that better accounts for existing evidence. We then consider how these distinct computations may map onto distinct emotions and moods. Integrating extensive research on the causes and consequences of different emotions suggests a parsimonious one-to-one mapping, according to which emotions are integral to how we evaluate outcomes (pleasure & pain), learn to predict them (happiness & sadness), use them to inform our (frustration & content) and others’ (anger & gratitude) actions, and plan in order to realize (desire & hope) or avoid (fear & anxiety) uncertain outcomes.

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The seminal work on the “firstly cooperate, then repeat other’s actions” strategy in game theory

September 19, 2024 15:36 ,

Robert Axelrod; William D. Hamilton, The Evolution of Cooperation, Science, New Series, Vol. 211, No. 4489. (Mar. 27, 1981), pp. 1390-1396 https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/pdfs/axelrod.pdf.

Cooperation in organisms, whether bacteria or primates, has been a
difficulty for evolutionary theory since Darwin. On the assumption that interactions
between pairs of individuals occur on a probabilistic basis, a model is developed
based on the concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy in the context of the
Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Deductions from the model, and the results of a computer
tournament show how cooperation based on reciprocity can get started in an asocial
world, can thrive while interacting with a wide range of other strategies, and can resist
invasion once fully established. Potential applications include specific aspects of
territoriality, mating, and disease.

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