PNAS Cover: How the Brain Develops Cognition

A new study introduces a new neural computational model of the human brain that could shed light on how the brain develops complex cognitive abilities and advance neuroartificial intelligence research
.

The model, featured on the cover of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), describes the development of nerves at three levels of information processing:

• The first sensorimotor level explores how internal brain activity learns patterns from perception and links them to action;

• The cognitive level examines how the brain combines these patterns;

• Finally, the conscious level considers how the brain separates from the outside world and manipulates learned patterns (through memory) that are no longer perceived
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Because the model focuses on the interaction between the two basic learning types, the team's research provides clues
to the core mechanisms of cognition.

From visual recognition to cognitive operations of conscious perception, the model addresses three increasingly complex tasks
that span these levels.

The findings highlight two fundamental mechanisms for the multi-level development of cognitive abilities in biological neural networks:

• The apparent evolution of synapses is Hebbian learning at the local scale and reinforcement learning at the global scale;

• as well as the self-organization dynamics through the spontaneous activity and balance of the excitation/inhibition ratio of neurons
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"Our model shows how the fusion of neural and artificial intelligence highlights biological mechanisms and cognitive architectures that can drive the next generation of AI and even eventually lead to artificial consciousness," said team member Guillaume Dumas, assistant professor of computational psychiatry at UdeM and principal investigator at
CHU's St.

Reaching this milestone, he adds, may require the integration of the social dimension
of cognition.

The team believes that anchoring future computational models in biological and social realities will not only continue to elucidate the core mechanisms of cognition, but will also help provide a unique bridge
for AI to the only known system with advanced social awareness: the human brain.

Multilevel development of cognitive abilities in an artificial neural network