Abstract

Neural Population Computing – Stephen E. Nadeau

4th European Congress of Neurology and Neuropsychiatry

Title: Neural Population Computing. Basic Principles of Population Dynamics and Cognitive Function

Speaker Name: Stephen E. Nadeau University of Florida College of Medicine, USA

Abstract: Introduction: Introduction to the principles of parallel distributed processing (PDP) and their power in explaining mechanisms underlying cognitive processes. Materials and Methods: Analytic review of the PDP and cognitive science literature. Results and Discussion: This talk will review the basic principles of PDP. Representations in the brain are encoded as patterns of activity of large populations of neurons. The science of population encoded representations — PDP — defines cerebral processes in terms of settling within constellations of attractor basins and eventually into constellations of attractor states, thereby achieving parallel constraint satisfaction. It achieves neurological verisimilitude and has been able to account for a large number of cognitive phenomena in normal people, including stimulus recognition, the effects of stimulus salience, top-down/bottom-up processing, the effect of statistical regularities of experience, frequency, and age of acquisition, instantiation of rules and symbols, content addressable memory and the capacity for pattern completion, preservation of function in the face of noisy or distorted input, and inference. It has made major contributions to our understanding of normal spoken and written language processing; patterns of language impairment in damaged brains in many very different languages; reactive and volitional attention (including hemispatial neglect); executive function; episodic and declarative memory; motor planning; visual processing; Piagetian stages of development; and neuroeconomics. Conclusions: This work provides a mechanistic account for a host of well-studied cognitive phenomena in terms of processes plausibly involving actual neurons. Key words: attention, cognitive function, executive function, knowledge, language, parallel distributed processing References:  S.E. Nadeau, “Neural population dynamics and cognitive function.” Front. Hum. Neurosci., vol. 14, p. 50, Mar. 2020.

Biography

Dr. Nadeau studied chemical physics and political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and achieved a medical degree at the University of Florida College of Medicine. After one year of post-MD fellowship training with Kenneth M. Heilman, he has devoted his research career mainly to cognitive neurology and, in particular, to understanding how higher neural functions can be supported by actual neurons. He is currently Professor of Neurology at the University of Florida. He has published two books and 158 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. Get in touch

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