Resource constraints on computation and communication in the brain

  • Authors:
  • Sashank Varma

  • Affiliations:
  • Stanford Center For Innovations in Learning, Stanford, CA

  • Venue:
  • IJCAI'07 Proceedings of the 20th international joint conference on Artifical intelligence
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

This paper contributes to the emerging literature at the border between AI and cognitive neuroscience, analyzing the resource constraints that shape brain function. The brain is conceptualized as a set of areas that collaborate to perform complex cognitive tasks. Both (1) computation within individual areas and (2) communication between collaborating areas are viewed as resource-consuming activities. The efficient deployment of limited resources is formalized as a Linear Programming problem which the brain is hypothesized to solve on a moment-by-moment basis. A model of language processing is analyzed within this framework and found to exhibit resource utilization profiles consistent with those observed in functional neuroimaging studies of humans.