Speaker: Chris Sims, PhD, assistant professor of psychology

 

In the past half-century, psychology and neuroscience have been revolutionized by the idea that the human mind can be understood by studying the computational processes that underlie learning, memory and perception. However, it has also become clear that the brain is no ordinary computer. Unlike the digital transistor, the sensory and motor systems of the brain are inherently noisy, and our environment is unpredictable. So what’s a brain to do?

Drawing on research in human perception, motor control and higher-level cognition, this talk will explore how two advanced computational mechanisms—Bayesian statistics and probabilistic generative models—allow the human mind to thrive in an uncertain world.