Connectionists: Physiologically Realistic Cognitive Modelling: New Book

[Andrew Coward]

(Apologies if you receive this announcement more than once)


A recently published book, “A System Architecture Approach to the  
Brain: from Neurons to Consciousness” (ISBN 1-59454-433-6), applies  
some developments in systems theory to demonstrate that detailed  
modelling of higher cognitive processes in terms of neurophysiology  
requires some very specific architectural approaches.

The book demonstrates theoretical arguments that any learning system  
that is subject to a range of practical considerations will be  
constrained within a set of architectural bounds called the  
recommendation architecture. The theoretical arguments have been  
developed by analogy with the ways in which practical considerations  
constrain the architectures of extremely complex electronic control  
systems, although there is minimal direct resemblance between such  
architectures and those of learning systems.

The practical considerations are (1) the need to perform a large number  
of behavioural features with relatively limited physical resources for  
information recording, information processing and internal information  
communication; (2) the need to add and modify features without side  
effects on other features; (3) the need to protect the many different  
meanings of information generated by one part of the system and  
utilized for different purposes by each of a number of other parts of  
the system; (4) the need to maintain the association between results  
obtained by different parts of the system from a set of system inputs  
arriving at the same time; (5) the need to limit the volume of  
information required to specify the system construction process; (6)  
the need to limit the complexity of the construction process; and (7)  
the need to recover from construction errors and subsequent physical  
failures or damage.

The system theory demonstrates that if such needs are strong, there are  
some remarkably specific constraints on the system architecture. There  
are constraints on how functionality is separated into modules and  
components, on device information models, on the ways in which devices  
are organized and connected within and between modules and components,  
and on the ways in which information can be recorded and processed.

One key constraint is a requirement for a separation between a  
clustering subsystem which defines and detects conditions within the  
information available to the system, and several competition subsystems  
which receive some of the conditions and interpret each condition as a  
recommendation in favour of a range of different behaviours, each with  
a different weight. These competition subsystems determine the current  
total recommendation weights of all behaviours across all current  
conditions and implement the most strongly recommended behaviour.  
Consequence feedback following a behaviour can set or change  
recommendation weights but cannot change condition definitions.  
Furthermore, once a condition has been defined in clustering, there are  
tight restrictions on subsequent changes. The limited ability to change  
condition definitions is one primary difference from traditional neural  
networks.

The book describes the strong resemblances between the structures and  
processes predicted for a system within the recommendation architecture  
bounds and the physiological structures and processes of the mammal  
brain. The ways in which the recommendation architecture approach makes  
it possible to understand experimental results for a wide range of  
cognitive processes in terms of physiology are described.

Electronic implementations of systems within the recommendation  
architecture bounds are described that confirm the resemblances with  
biological brains.

L. Andrew Coward
Research Fellow
Department of Computer Science
Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200
Australia
andrew.coward at anu.edu.au

tel +61 02 6125 5694
mob +62 0431 529 197
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~Andrew.Coward/


Book Website:   
http://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php? 
cPath=23_128&products_id=2652