CMU RI seminar: The neuroarchitecture of complex cognition

Marcel Adam Just
D. O. Hebb Professor of Psychology
Carnegie Mellon University

Recent findings in brain imaging, particularly fMRI, are beginning to reveal some of the fundamental properties of the organization of the cortical systems that underpin complex cognition. A set of operating principles govern the system organization, characterizing the system as a set of collaborating cortical centers that operate as a large-scale cortical network. Two of the network's critical features are that it is resource-constrained and dynamically-configured, with resource constraints and demands dynamically shaping the network topology. The operating principles are embodied in a cognitive neuroarchitecture, 4CAPS, consisting of a number of interacting computational centers that correspond to activating cortical areas. Each 4CAPS center is a hybrid production system, possessing both symbolic and connectionist attributes. 4CAPS models of several cognitive tasks (sentence comprehension, spatial problem solving, and complex multitasking) have been developed and compared to brain activation and behavioral results.