Standard Research Grant: Representation and Inference in the Brain

这个为期三年的项目的目标是为大脑的归因开发有用和准确的“表征”和“推理”的定义。表征和推理是神经科学、认知科学和哲学中的中心概念，但这些术语没有被广泛接受的定义，这些领域中的每个领域都将受益于神经活动方面的定义。例如，神经学家经常将神经活动描述为代表和推断。这是他们描述这一活动的整体功能的方式，是对详细神经记录的抽象。但是，由于没有确定的定义，这些描述没有客观依据。因此，它们被视为随意的粉饰，而不是严格的分析。正如恰当的定义加速了其他领域的进步一样，恰当的‘表征’和‘推理’的定义也有可能加速神经科学的进步。本项目将描述从神经活动的角度定义‘表征’和‘推理’的挑战，调查潜在的定义，并开发这些术语的新定义，将它们与特定种类的学习联系起来，每个术语都有可识别的神经关联。然后，它将展示如何将特定的表征和推理归因于大脑。该项目的成果将极大地促进神经科学和认知科学的哲学基础，从而推动这些领域的发展。它们还将用于研究生和高级本科课程，并将公开发布。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The goal of this three-year project is to develop useful and precise definitions of ‘representation’ and ‘inference’ for attribution to the brain. Representation and inference are central notions in neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy, but there is no widely accepted definitions of these terms, and each of these fields would benefit from definitions in terms of neural activity. For example, neuroscientists often describe neural activity as representing and inferring. It is their way of describing the overall function of that activity, an abstraction away from detailed neural recordings. But, because there are no settled definitions, there are no objective grounds for these descriptions. As a result, they are treated as casual glosses rather than as rigorous analyses. Just as proper definitions accelerated progress in other fields, proper definitions of ‘representation’ and ‘inference’ have the potential to accelerate progress in neuroscience.This project will describe the challenge of defining ‘representation’ and ‘inference’ in terms of neural activity, survey potential definitions, and develop new definitions of these terms that link them to specific kinds of learning, each with identifiable neural correlates. It will then be shown how to attribute specific representations and inferences to the brain. The results of this project will contribute substantially to the philosophical foundations of neuroscience and cognitive science, and thereby serve to advance these fields. They will also be used in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses, and they will be published open source.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.