Category: Neurobiology/psychology
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Interoception and Active Inference for mental health
Interoception refers to the process by which the nervous system senses and integrates signals originating from within the body, providing a momentary mapping of the body’s internal landscape and its relationship to the outside world. Active inference is based on the premise that afferent sensory input to the brain is constantly shaped and modified by…
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EXplore-versus-EXploit problems
Trade-offs between producing costly movements for gathering information (‘explore’) and using previously acquired information to achieve a goal (‘exploit’) arise in a wide variety of problems, including foraging, reinforcement learning and sensorimotor control. Determining the optimal balance between exploration and exploitation is computationally intractable, necessitating heuristic solutions. In “Mode switching in organisms for solving explore-versus-exploit…
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Conceptual Bootstrapping (human cognition)
To tackle a hard problem, it is often wise to reuse and recombine existing knowledge. Such an ability to bootstrap enables us to grow rich mental concepts despite limited cognitive resources. This article presents a computational model of conceptual bootstrapping. This model uses a dynamic conceptual repertoire that can cache and later reuse elements of…
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Puzzled …? – Consider the Bayesian brain hypothesis!
Dysfunctional breathing disorder(s) (DBD) is an umbrella term for a set of poorly distinguishable clinical conditions including the most emblematic and anciently known hyperventilation syndrome. DBD affects in a variable proportion (between 5 and 35%) both adults and children, with a highly negative impact on health-related quality of life. DBD is consensually considered as a…
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The computational power of the human brain
Peter J. Gebicke-Haerter published a great review article with this title. I selected some snippets and the key conclusion: At the end of the 20th century, analog systems in computer science have been widely replaced by digital systems due to their higher computing power. Nevertheless, the question keeps being intriguing until now: is the brain…
