030826 Parallel processing in the mind
I don’t know if it originated with Grossberg, but I like the concept of complementary processing streams. Actually, he talks about it as if it always involves a dichotomy. Could it not also be multiple (any number) parallel streams? Certainly, the convergence of inputs from a large number of brain areas on the amygdala indicates that it’s not just dichotomous streams.
Grossberg writes as if he is describing exactly what happensespecially with his neural circuit diagrams, but the more I read, the more they seem fanciful. Certainly there’s something missing when the diagrams only show neurons in layers 2/3, 4, and 6.
In also seems that there’s something missing from the analysis of the visual “what” pathway. Edge and Surface processing seem very closely tied throughout. In visual area V1, the “blob” neurons are surrounded by “interblob” neurons and in visual area V2, the “thin stripe” the neurons alternate with the “interstripe” neurons. Surely there is some crosstalk between (among) the channels.
Grossberg uses the term “catastrophic forgetting”. He also talks about complementary channels of processing in the brain. And he, among others, and talks about a where channel to the parietal lobe and a “what channel to the temporal lobe. Things then get a little confused. Part of the point of “catastrophic forgetting” is, in effect that certain memories need to get overwritten, e.g., memories of where a particular movable object is located. In contrast other memories should not be easily forgotten.
It is not clear that the categories “easily over writable” and “not easily over writable” (or should it be “things that change often” and things that don’t often change”?) are the same as “where” and “what”. It’s certainly possible from an evolutionary standpoint that what and where are sufficiently essential aspects of the environment that they should be per se ensconced in genetically determined neural structures. Nonetheless, is reasonable to ask whether what evolution has provided is also being used in ways unrelated to its evolutionarily determined functionality.
Or alternatively, given that evolution has cobbled together mechanisms capable of recording information with differing degrees of environmental permanence, it seems reasonable to suppose that the same mechanism could show up in different places; although, I am well aware that the essentially opportunistic functioning of evolution leaves open the possibility that the same function is performed in many different ways. Still, in our environment and the environment of our animal ancestors some things change rapidly and some things don’t.