Biological
Learning and Control:
How
the brain builds representations, predicts events, and makes decisions
Reza
Shadmehr and Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi
MIT Press (2012)
In
this book we present a theoretical framework for understanding the regularity
of the brain’s perceptions, its ability to learn, and its control of movements.
We offer an account of perception as the combination of prediction and
observation: the brain builds internal models that describe what should happen,
and then combines this prediction with reports from the sensory system to form
a belief.
Considering
the brain’s control of movements, and variations despite biomechanical
similarities among old and young, healthy and unhealthy, and humans and other
animals, we review evidence suggesting that motor commands reflect an economic
decision made by our brain weighing reward and effort. This evidence suggests
that the brain prefers to receive a reward sooner than later, devaluing or
discounting reward with the passage of time; then as the temporal discounting
of reward changes in the brain because of development, disease, or evolution,
the shape of our movements will also change.
The
internal models provide the brain with an essential survival skill: the ability
to predict based on past observations. The formal concepts presented here offer
a way to describe how representations are formed, what structure they have, and
how the theoretical concepts can be tested.