Internal model

…posterior inference based on an internal model to construct representations that explain the stimulus. Indeed, there is support for this hypothesis in vision. Vision is not a passive process; rather, it actively recovers the features of an object from the signal cast on the retina. Even when faced with a cluttered scene of overlapping objects, the visual system quickly parses positional relationship

…A candidate process for internally representing alternatives is the population activity of spatially-tuned hippocampal neurons that not only represent an animal’s actual location during locomotion, bu

…inputs from the body with an internal model of expected movement. When these signals match, vestibular signals---which would otherwise stabilize the head against movements---are suppressed, allowing voluntary movement to occur. This mechanism implies that integrating proprioceptive and vestibular inputs is crucial for effective coordination. While previous studies indicate the involvement of multiple brain areas, with the PIVC at the forefront, the mechanisms

Every day we make decisions critical for adaptation and survival. We repeat actions with known consequences. But we can also infer associations between loosely related events to infer and imagine the outcome of entirely novel choices. In the first part of the talk I will show that during successful inference, the mammalian brain uses a hippocampal prospective code to forecast temporally structured learned associations. Moreover, during periods of rest, co-activation of hippocampal cells in sharp-wave/ripples represent inferred relationships that include reward, thereby “joining-the-dots” betwe

…we might determine the proportion of internal model (brain) to externalized processing (offloading) in a developing embodied

The cerebellum is critically involved in motor control, refining trajectories as movements are being executed. This requires fast, online learning. What features of cerebellar circuit structure make it particularly suited to online learning? The cerebellum has a distinctive circuit architecture in which each mossy fibre input typically projects to 250 granule cells, a population that comprises more than half of the neurons in the brain. Each granule cell forms ~4 synapses with mossy fibres. The main hypotheses for this sparse input expansion are that it facilitates pattern separation1 and smoo

…stimuli and the predictions of an internal model using the Kalman filter or its extensions. However, a satisfactory neural model of Kalman filtering and control is lacking because existing proposals have the follo

…develop and characterise a biological model system with layer 5 pyramidal cells in the centre. We aim to gain access to prediction and internal model generating processes by controlling, understanding or monitoring everything else: the sensory environment, feed-forward and feed-back inputs, integrative properties, their spiking activity and output. I’ll show recent work from the lab establishing such a model system both in term

…information to build and update our internal model of the world for future decision-making processes. Despite the ubiquity of passively l

The ability to decide and act autonomously is a distinctive feature of human cognition. From a motor neurophysiology viewpoint, these 'voluntary' actions can be distinguished by the lack of an obvious triggering sensory stimulus: the action is considered to be a product of thought, rather than a reflex result of a specific input. A reverse engineering approach shows that such actions are caused by neurons of the primary cortex, which in turn depend on medial frontal areas, and finally a combination of prefrontal cortical connections and subcortical drive from basal ganglia loops. One tradit