Notes for week 3

Barbara

Multisensory integration; decision-making

• PowerPoint slides
• "How do priors matter?"

[Shimon]
For example, through contextual competition; see Bayesian Decision Theory and Psychophysics, A. Yuille and H. Bülthoff (1994).
But: prior knowledge is not enough; see Bill Freeman's work on generic view assumption (1994).

Shimon

Decision-making and neuroeconomics

• Closing the decision-outcome-consequences loop via the outside world
• Slides from Psych 214
• Kording et al. (saccade adaptation):



• Relationship to control theory:

"We observed that the system was equivalent to the generative model of the Kalman filter [...]" [a Kalman process can be thought of as a continuous analogue of a Markov process]

• Multiple times scales in classical nonlinear feedback control: Black Hawk up
• Learning and sleep:

"Because our model shows how a rational learner would update its knowledge when faced with sensory deprivation, it gives one explanation as to why there are improved rates of learning after periods of darkness. It is interesting to view sleep in a similar framework: as essentially a period in which the brain simulates movements, but is deprived of actual feedback. The post-sleep improvements in rates of learning may be partly due to an increased uncertainty regarding the states of the internal model."

[see, e.g., The Functional Anatomy of Sleep-dependent Visual Skill Learning, M. P. Walker et al., Cerebral Cortex 15:1666-1675 (2005)]