Mental simulation

When making decision under risk, people often exhibit behaviours that classical economic theories cannot explain. Newer models that attempt to account for these ‘irrational’ behaviours often lack neuroscience bases and require the introduction of subjective and problem-specific constructs. Here, we present a decision-making model inspired by the prediction error signals and introspective neuronal replay reported in the brain. In the model, decisions are chosen based on ‘anticipated surprise’, defined by a nonlinear average of the differences between individual outcomes and a reference point. T

Mental simulation—the capacity to imagine what will or what could be—is a salient feature of human cognition, playing a key role in a wide range of cognitive abilities. In artificial intelligence, the last few years have seen the development of methods which are analogous to mental models and mental simulation. In this talk, I will discuss recent methods in deep learning for constructing such models from data and learning to use them via reinforcement learning, and compare such approaches to human mental simulation. While a number of challenges remain in matching the capacity of human mental s

…model-free control and model-based “mental simulation” appears to be the basis for computational and d