The Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience of Categorization, Novelty-Detec...

Google Tech Talks November, 15 2007 ABSTRACT Neurocomputational models provide fundamental insights towards understanding the human brain circuits for learning new associations and organizing our world into appropriate categories. In this talk I will review the information-processing functions of four interacting brain systems for learning and categorization: (1) the basal ganglia which incrementally adjusts choice behaviors using environmental feedback about the consequences of our actions, (2) the hippocampus which supports learning in other brain regions through the creation of new stimulus representations (and, hence, new similarity relationships) that reflect important statistical regularities in the environment, (3) the medial septum which works in a feedback-loop with the hippocampus, using novelty-detection to alter the rate at which stimulus representations are updated through experience, (4) the frontal lobes which provide for selective attention and executive control of learning and memory. The computational models to be described have been evaluated through a variety of empirical methodoligies including human functional brain imaging, studies of patients with localized brain damage due to injury or early-stage neurodegenerative diseases, behavioral genetic studies of naturally-occuring individual variability, as well as comparative lesion and genetic studies with rodents. Our applications of these models to engineering and computer science including automated anomaly detection systems for mechanical fault diagnosis on US Navy helicopters and submarines as well more recent contributions to the DoD's DARPA program for Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA). Speaker: Dr. Mark Gluck Mark Gluck is a Professor of Neuroscience at Rutgers University - Newark, co-director of the Rutgers Memory Disorders Project, and publisher of the public health newsletter, Memory Loss and the Brain. He works at the interface between neuroscience, psychology, and computer science, where his research focuses on the neural bases of learning and memory, and the consequences of memory loss due to aging, trauma, and disease. He is the co-author of "Gateway to Memory: An Introduction to Neural Network Models of the Hippocampus and Memory " (MIT Press, 2001) and a forthcoming undergraduate textbook, "Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior." He has edited several other books and has published over 60 scientific journal articles. His awards include the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions from the American Psychological Society and the Young Investigator Award for Cognitive and Neural Sciences from the Office of Naval Research. In 1996, he was awarded a NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by President Bill Clinton. For more information, see http://www.gluck.edu.