Agents of the Mind

Jim Houk, Professor, Department of Physiology, Northwestern University

The higher order circuitry of the brain is comprised of a large-scale network of cerebral cortical areas that are individually regulated by loops through subcortical structures, particularly through the basal ganglia and through the cerebellum. Each area of cortex together with its loops through basal ganglia and cerebellum comprises one distributed processing module (DPM). The subcortical loops have powerful computational architectures which are summarized by Figure 1 in Houk (2005). My colleagues S Yildirim, G Dam, and J Wang are using the NetLogo agent-based modeling environment for simulating a set of commands for controlling arm movements to visual targets. We have reason to believe that the signal processing operations of DPM agents are generic. If so, then a network of DPM agents should be an appropriate framework for exploring the dynamics of the mind.

Slides