Brain Inspired

Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. Anne Collins runs her  Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the University of California, Berkley One of the things she's been working on for years is how our working memory plays a role in learning as well, and specifically how working memory and reinforcement learning interact to affect how we learn, depending on the nature of what we're trying to learn. We discuss that interaction specifically. We also discuss more broadly how segregated and how overlapping and interacting our cognitive functions are, what that implies about our natural tendency to think in dichotomies - like MF vs MB-RL, system-1 vs system-2, etc., and we dive into plenty other subjects, like how to possibly incorporate these ideas into AI. Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. Twitter: @ccnlab or @Anne_On_Tw. Related papers: How Working Memory and Reinforcement Learning Are Intertwined: A Cognitive, Neural, and Computational Perspective.  Beyond simple dichotomies in reinforcement learning. The Role of Executive Function in Shaping Reinforcement Learning. What do reinforcement learning models measure? Interpreting model parameters in cognition and neuroscience. 0:00 - Intro 5:25 - Dimensionality of learning 11:19 - Modularity of function and computations 16:51 - Is working memory a thing? 19:33 - Model-free model-based dichotomy 30:40 - Working memory and RL 44:43 - How working memory and RL interact 50:50 - Working memory and attention 59:37 - Computations vs. implementations 1:03:25 - Interpreting results 1:08:00 - Working memory and AI

Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. Carolyn Dicey Jennings is a philosopher and a cognitive scientist at University of California, Merced. In her book The Attending Mind, she lays out an attempt to unify the concept of attention. Carolyn defines attention roughly as the mental prioritization of some stuff over other stuff based on our collective interests. And one of her main claims is that attention is evidence of a real, emergent self or subject, that can't be reduced to microscopic brain activity. She does connect attention to more macroscopic brain activity, suggesting slow longer-range oscillations in our brains can alter or entrain the activity of more local neural activity, and this is a candidate for mental causation. We unpack that more in our discussion, and how Carolyn situates attention among other cognitive functions, like consciousness, action, and perception. Carolyn's website. Books: The Attending Mind. Aeon article: I Attend, Therefore I Am. Related papers The Subject of Attention. Consciousness and Mind. Practical Realism about the Self. 0:00 - Intro 12:15 - Reconceptualizing attention 16:07 - Types of attention 19:02 - Predictive processing and attention 23:19 - Consciousness, identity, and self 30:39 - Attention and the brain 35:47 - Integrated information theory 42:05 - Neural attention 52:08 - Decoupling oscillations from spikes 57:16 - Selves in other organisms 1:00:42 - AI and the self 1:04:43 - Attention, consciousness, conscious perception 1:08:36 - Meaning and attention 1:11:12 - Conscious entrainment 1:19:57 - Is attention a switch or knob?

Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. Michael L. Anderson is a professor at the Rotman Institute of Philosophy, at Western University. His book, After Phrenology: Neural Reuse and the Interactive Brain, calls for a re-conceptualization of how we understand and study brains and minds. Neural reuse is the phenomenon that any given brain area is active for multiple cognitive functions, and partners with different sets of brain areas to carry out different cognitive functions. We discuss the implications for this, and other topics in Michael's research and the book, like evolution, embodied cognition, and Gibsonian perception. Michael also fields guest questions from John Krakauer and Alex Gomez-Marin, about representations and metaphysics, respectively. Michael's website. Twitter: @mljanderson. Book: After Phrenology: Neural Reuse and the Interactive Brain. Related papers Neural reuse: a fundamental organizational principle of the brain. Some dilemmas for an account of neural representation: A reply to Poldrack. Debt-free intelligence: Ecological information in minds and machines Describing functional diversity of brain regions and brain networks. 0:00 - Intro 3:02 - After Phrenology 13:18 - Typical neuroscience experiment 16:29 - Neural reuse 18:37 - 4E cognition and representations 22:48 - John Krakauer question 27:38 - Gibsonian perception 36:17 - Autoencoders without representations 49:22 - Pluralism 52:42 - Alex Gomez-Marin question - metaphysics 1:01:26 - Stimulus-response historical neuroscience 1:10:59 - After Phrenology influence 1:19:24 - Origins of neural reuse 1:35:25 - The way forward

Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. Steve Byrnes is a physicist turned AGI safety researcher. He's concerned that when we create AGI, whenever and however that might happen, we run the risk of creating it in a less than perfectly safe way. AGI safety (AGI not doing something bad) is a wide net that encompasses AGI alignment (AGI doing what we want it to do). We discuss a host of ideas Steve writes about in his Intro to Brain-Like-AGI Safety blog series, which uses what he has learned about brains to address how we might safely make AGI. Steve's website.Twitter: @steve47285Intro to Brain-Like-AGI Safety.

Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience Dan Nicholson is a philosopher at George Mason University. He incorporates the history of science and philosophy into modern analyses of our conceptions of processes related to life and organisms. He is also interested in re-orienting our conception of the universe as made fundamentally of things/substances, and replacing it with the idea the universe is made fundamentally of processes (process philosophy). In this episode, we both of those subjects, the why the "machine conception of the organism" is incorrect, how to apply these ideas to topics like neuroscience and artificial intelligence, and much more. Dan's website. Google Scholar.Twitter: @NicholsonHPBioBookEverything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology.Related papersIs the Cell Really a Machine?The Machine Conception of the Organism in Development and Evolution: A Critical Analysis.On Being the Right Size, Revisited: The Problem with Engineering Metaphors in Molecular Biology.Related episode: BI 118 Johannes Jäger: Beyond Networks. 0:00 - Intro 2:49 - Philosophy and science 16:37 - Role of history 23:28 - What Is Life? And interaction with James Watson 38:37 - Arguments against the machine conception of organisms 49:08 - Organisms as streams (processes) 57:52 - Process philosophy 1:08:59 - Alfred North Whitehead 1:12:45 - Process and consciousness 1:22:16 - Artificial intelligence and process 1:31:47 - Language and symbols and processes

Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. William B. Miller is an ex-physician turned evolutionary biologist. In this episode, we discuss topics related to his new book, Bioverse: How the Cellular World Contains the Secrets to Life's Biggest Questions. The premise of the book is that all individual cells are intelligent in their own right, and possess a sense of self. From this, Bill makes the case that cells cooperate with other cells to engineer whole organisms that in turn serve as wonderful hosts for the myriad cell types. Further, our bodies are collections of our own cells (with our DNA), and an enormous amount and diversity of foreign cells - our microbiome - that communicate and cooperate with each other and with our own cells. We also discuss how cell intelligence compares to human intelligence, what Bill calls the "era of the cell" in science, how the future of medicine will harness the intelligence of cells and their cooperative nature, and much more. William's website.Twitter: @BillMillerMD.Book: Bioverse: How the Cellular World Contains the Secrets to Life's Biggest Questions. 0:00 - Intro 3:43 - Bioverse 7:29 - Bill's cell appreciation origins 17:03 - Microbiomes 27:01 - Complexity of microbiomes and the "Era of the cell" 46:00 - Robustness 55:05 - Cell vs. human intelligence 1:10:08 - Artificial intelligence 1:21:01 - Neuro-AI 1:25:53 - Hard problem of consciousness

Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. Gaute Einevoll is a professor at the University of Oslo and Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Use develops detailed models of brain networks to use as simulations, so neuroscientists can test their various theories and hypotheses about how networks implement various functions. Thus, the models are tools. The goal is to create models that are multi-level, to test questions at various levels of biological detail; and multi-modal, to predict that handful of signals neuroscientists measure from real brains (something Gaute calls "measurement physics"). We also discuss Gaute's thoughts on Carina Curto's "beautiful vs ugly models", and his reaction to Noah Hutton's In Silico documentary about the Blue Brain and Human Brain projects (Gaute has been funded by the Human Brain Project since its inception). Gaute's website.Twitter: @GauteEinevoll.Related papers:The Scientific Case for Brain Simulations.Brain signal predictions from multi-scale networks using a linearized framework.Uncovering circuit mechanisms of current sinks and sources with biophysical simulations of primary visual cortexLFPy: a Python module for calculation of extracellular potentials from multicompartment neuron models.Gaute's Sense and Science podcast. 0:00 - Intro 3:25 - Beautiful and messy models 6:34 - In Silico 9:47 - Goals of human brain project 15:50 - Brain simulation approach 21:35 - Degeneracy in parameters 26:24 - Abstract principles from simulations 32:58 - Models as tools 35:34 - Predicting brain signals 41:45 - LFPs closer to average 53:57 - Plasticity in simulations 56:53 - How detailed should we model neurons? 59:09 - Lessons from predicting signals 1:06:07 - Scaling up 1:10:54 - Simulation as a tool 1:12:35 - Oscillations 1:16:24 - Manifolds and simulations 1:20:22 - Modeling cortex like Hodgkin and Huxley

Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. Noah Hutton writes, directs, and scores documentary and narrative films. On this episode, we discuss his documentary In Silico. In 2009, Noah watched a TED talk by Henry Markram, in which Henry claimed it would take 10 years to fully simulate a human brain. This claim inspired Noah to chronicle the project, visiting Henry and his team periodically throughout. The result was In Silico, which tells the science, human, and social story of Henry's massively funded projects - the Blue Brain Project and the Human Brain Project. In Silico website.Rent or buy In Silico.Noah's website.Twitter: @noah_hutton. 0:00 - Intro 3:36 - Release and premier 7:37 - Noah's background 9:52 - Origins of In Silico 19:39 - Recurring visits 22:13 - Including the critics 25:22 - Markram's shifting outlook and salesmanship 35:43 - Promises and delivery 41:28 - Computer and brain terms interchange 49:22 - Progress vs. illusion of progress 52:19 - Close to quitting 58:01 - Salesmanship vs bad at estimating timelines 1:02:12 - Brain simulation science 1:11:19 - AGI 1:14:48 - Brain simulation vs. neuro-AI 1:21:03 - Opinion on TED talks 1:25:16 - Hero worship 1:29:03 - Feedback on In Silico

Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. Lauren Ross is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine. She studies and writes about causal and non-causal explanations in philosophy of science, including distinctions among causal structures. Throughout her work, Lauren employs Jame's Woodward's interventionist approach to causation, which Jim and I discussed in episode 145. In this episode, we discuss Jim's lasting impact on the philosophy of causation, the current dominance of mechanistic explanation and its relation to causation, and various causal structures of explanation, including pathways, cascades, topology, and constraints. Lauren's website.Twitter: @ProfLaurenRossRelated papersA call for more clarity around causality in neuroscience.The explanatory nature of constraints: Law-based, mathematical, and causal.Causal Concepts in Biology: How Pathways Differ from Mechanisms and Why It Matters.Distinguishing topological and causal explanation.Multiple Realizability from a Causal Perspective.Cascade versus mechanism: The diversity of causal structure in science. 0:00 - Intro 2:46 - Lauren's background 10:14 - Jim Woodward legacy 15:37 - Golden era of causality 18:56 - Mechanistic explanation 28:51 - Pathways 31:41 - Cascades 36:25 - Topology 41:17 - Constraint 50:44 - Hierarchy of explanations 53:18 - Structure and function 57:49 - Brain and mind 1:01:28 - Reductionism 1:07:58 - Constraint again 1:14:38 - Multiple realizability

Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. James Woodward is a recently retired Professor from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Jim has tremendously influenced the field of causal explanation in the philosophy of science. His account of causation centers around intervention - intervening on a cause should alter its effect. From this minimal notion, Jim has described many facets and varieties of causal structures. In this episode, we discuss topics from his recent book, Causation with a Human Face: Normative Theory and Descriptive Psychology. In the book, Jim advocates that how we should think about causality - the normative - needs to be studied together with how we actually do think about causal relations in the world - the descriptive. We discuss many topics around this central notion, epistemology versus metaphysics, the the nature and varieties of causal structures. Jim's website.Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation.Causation with a Human Face: Normative Theory and Descriptive Psychology. 0:00 - Intro 4:14 - Causation with a Human Face & Functionalist approach 6:16 - Interventionist causality; Epistemology and metaphysics 9:35 - Normative and descriptive 14:02 - Rationalist approach 20:24 - Normative vs. descriptive 28:00 - Varying notions of causation 33:18 - Invariance 41:05 - Causality in complex systems 47:09 - Downward causation 51:14 - Natural laws 56:38 - Proportionality 1:01:12 - Intuitions 1:10:59 - Normative and descriptive relation 1:17:33 - Causality across disciplines 1:21:26 - What would help our understanding of causation