Computational Modelling Group

Seminar  7th November 2012 4 p.m.  Building 53, Room 4025

Informational Principles in the Perception-Action Loop

Dr Daniel Polani
University of Hertfordshire

Web page
http://cs4southampton.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/cs4-future-talk-dr-daniel-polani
Categories
Complex Systems
Submitter
Luke Goater

Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (1956) and, in last years, especially its later rediscovery and extension by Touchette and Lloyd (2000, 2004) have indicated that Shannon information acts as fundamental “currency” constraining the potential organisation and “administration” of cognitive tasks. In particular, there is increasing evidence that decision processes in biological organisms in fact exploit the limits implied by aforementioned work, and can therefore be subject to analysis with respect to information-theoretical optimality principles.

Under this hypothesis, many aspects of biologically plausible cognitive processing can be treated informationally, requiring only high-level constraints without having to specify detailed mechanisms. This gives rise to novel tools not only for high-level analysis of biological cognitive systems, but also for purposes of prediction and construction of biologically plausible artificial cognitive models. The talk will give an introduction into the question and methodology and demonstrate its operation with a number of examples.”

All CS4 talks are free and refreshments will be provided from 5pm. No registration is required. For videos of previous talks and details of future talks please visit:

http://cs4southampton.wordpress.com