"It is theoretically possible that in some way, the basic cortical
structure of cognition is simpler than we think and all necessary rules
for the organization of all knowledge are potentially available in the
relatively few cortical columns [see video illustration on the
right. -- SE] of the stem mammal. Alternatively, something changes as
brains enlarge."
Shimon
A few remarks about Merker's paper
Who you'd rather see funded: Merker or Markram (the leader of the Blue Brain Project)?
Concerning the passage
"[...] such a form of memory would
have to achieve global coherence in the sense that
each of its content elements should be related to
every other via its place and significance in a given
subject's stored experiential history"
— "related" or "relatable"?
Counter-current streams and "trace learning": this is the same as the Temporal Difference algorithm, which I discussed last time
in the context of reinforcement learning in the basal ganglia.
Some of the main insights from Merker's paper:
Concerning the function of the tri-partite pyramid-like architecture:
The interaction [between "the (sensory) world" and "the (motivated)
person"] yields the contents of awareness in the form of observer-centered
personal experience with its motivational, hedonic and goal-related biases
as its short-term ("on-line") result, and personal history in the form of
the record of the fate of an individual's motivated acts in the world over
time as its long term residue.
[cf. the MyLifeBits project].
On what it takes to satisfy this functional need:
"Nothing less than the ultimate interpretive
powers of the brain suffice when it comes to the
moment-to-moment determination of the actual
behavioral choices in life. Hence the presence of an
inextricably mixed representation of epistemic
abstraction and motivational bias in frontolimbic
cortex, the ultimate waystation to the hypothalamus."