Category Archives: Nerd Alert
Simulation Update
Last month I wrote about recreating a brain simulation model in an article I read about (Hamker, 2005). As I discussed there, the Hamker article describes a computational firing-rate model of several brain areas thought to play a role in … Continue reading
Philosophy in the Flesh (Book Review)
I recently read the book “Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. While I don’t agree with everything in the book, I think it provides a good conceptual … Continue reading
Standardized Formats for Computational Models?
In attempting to recreate an existing computational model, I’ve been thinking about how computational models are communicated. Currently, such models are described in research in many different ways – informal textual descriptions, diagrams, a few representative equations, relatively complete sets … Continue reading
A Need for Theoretical Psychology?
In psychology, we have a wealth of empirical data from experiments. In many cases, what we don’t have is a high-level understanding of how all of this empirical data is produced by the single integrated system of the brain. Traditionally … Continue reading
Levels of Modeling
A classic question in building brain models is “At what level should the model be built?” In other words, should we model, say, behavior with high-level “natural language” descriptions of action, rough large-scale brain area interactions, high-level neural networks, lower-level … Continue reading
Recreating a Computational Model
To become more familiar with current computational brain modeling, this summer I am attempting to recreate (in Matlab) a computational model of spatial and nonspatial attention described in a paper by Fred Hamker (2005). In this paper, Hamker gives a … Continue reading
Production Systems and Modeling Cognition
A “production system” is, at a rough level, a set of simple rules, such as “if X happens, then do Y“. The concept of production systems occurs frequently in computer science, and describes a type of rule-based control system for … Continue reading
Marvin Minsky’s “Computation” (Book Review)
“Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines” by Marvin Minsky, published in 1967, is meant to be a sort of textbook about basic theoretical topics in computer science (Minsky used the book himself in teaching a course at MIT). Minsky takes the … Continue reading
Varieties of Uncertainty
I’ve come across two interesting articles lately dealing with “uncertainty” and the role it may play in our decision-making processes. The first article (Vanni-Mercier et al., 2009) looks at the role of the hippocampus in computing (or representing) uncertainty. Different … Continue reading
Inspiration, Perspiration, and Inhibition of Return
I was thinking about what it takes to do great research, especially in relation to Thomas Edison’s (alleged) quote that “genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration”. I’m not sure I would go as far as he does (it seems … Continue reading
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