Augst 6, 2018
13:30 ~ 14:30
CiNet 1F Conference Room

“What is unique about the human brain (and its computation)?”

Rei Akaishi
Researcher, NICT/CiNet

Host : Masahiko Haruno　(PI)

Abstract:
It is often asked what is unique about computations in the human brain.
In a natural environment, animals including humans organize their behavior across continuous time and space. This is in contrast to the artificial situations in the experimental rooms where discrete and independent segmentations of time and space are common. Recently, more natural paradigms of reward-guided decisions were introduced from foraging theory.
Such experimental design has revealed multiple scales of information processing in the brain. Specifically, humans are not just concerned about “here and now” of the environment (local) but can engage with the situations “far and beyond” the immediate context (global). Similar computations based on extended temporal contexts were also observed in sequential effects in perceptual decision making. Individual decisions biased subsequent decisions and the biasing effects of single decisions accumulated across trials. Here, I would like to argue that foraging decisions and sequential decision effects are linked in the light of combined effects of local and global information processing. These multiple scales of information processing may have implications for both biological and aritificial computational systems.