Skip to content

High level functions of the brain

To be able to understand and recreate intelligence it is important to know which are the functions done by the brain.

Perception

Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment.1

Perception might be the brain function that it is currently best done by artificial intelligence. There are many models that can predict which objects are present on a image.

Language

A language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means of communication of humans, and can be conveyed through speech (spoken language), sign, or writing. 2

The Transformer architecture has recently allowed to create very powerful language models like GPT3 and Palm.

Memory

Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, it would be impossible for language, relationships, or personal identity to develop. 3

Language models like GPT3 have memorized part of the data they were trained on. However that is very different from human memory. Recurrent models have also some working memory that can modify their behaviour. I believe there is a big gap in this area between the brain and artificial neural networks.

Short-term memory

TODO

Long-term memory

TODO

Planning

Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. The evolution of forethought, the capacity to think ahead, is considered to have been a prime mover in human evolution. Planning is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior. It involves the use of logic and imagination to visualise not only a desired end result, but the steps necessary to achieve that result. 4

To be able to plan a model of the world is needed. The human brain is always making predictions about what are we going to experience and if something is different to the prediction attention is risen. This constant predictions are done unconsciously and continuously.

I have the believe that this mechanism of prediction of future events could be a very powerful signal to learn useful features for perception.

Attention

Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. Attention has also been described as the allocation of limited cognitive processing resources. Attention is manifested by an attentional bottleneck, in term of the amount of data the brain can process each second; for example, in human vision, only less than 1% of the visual input data (at around one megabyte per second) can enter the bottleneck,[3][4] leading to inattentional blindness. 5

We are receiving a lot of information and it seems that we cannot attend to all of it consciously. Instead we have to focus on a small part of the inputs. In the previous planning section we have advanced that surprising events can gather the attention.

Judgment

Decision-making

In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either rational or irrational. The decision-making process is a reasoning process based on assumptions of values, preferences and beliefs of the decision-maker. Every decision-making process produces a final choice, which may or may not prompt action. 6

It is interesting because I was thinking that decision-making was the same as planning, but the irrational part changes all. That links the process of decision-making to the emotions.

Emotion

Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioural responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, or creativity. 7

Motor skills

References


  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception 

  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language 

  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory 

  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning 

  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention 

  6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision-making 

  7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion 


Last update: 2022-09-21

Comments