Psychology

Edinburgh Psychology Keynote Talk

Speaker: Dr Terence Deacon (University of California, Berkeley)

Title: Re-biologizing cognition

Abstract: This talk explores two analogies from general biology that offer alternative perspectives for analyzing brain function.

  1. Turing machine state-to-state versus dynamic self-organization models of cognitive processes.
  2. Functional parallels between embryonic differentiation and the second-by-second differentiation of perceptions and behaviors.
  3. Anatomical and functional parallels between counter-current exchange found widely in biological diffusion processes and predictive coding models of cerebral cortical information processing.

The counter-current logic shows how highly fractionated and massively parallel input-output relationships can nevertheless maintain distributed coherence and functional integration. This biologized perspective will be used to hint at an alternative model for language processing and to suggest new artificial intelligence architectures.

Further information

For a link to join the talk email Dan Mirman.

Contact

Apr 14 2021 -

Edinburgh Psychology Keynote Talk

2021-04-14: Re-biologizing cognition

Online via link invitation