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Understanding neural networks is challenging due to their high-dimensional, interacting components. Inspired by human cognition, which processes complex sensory data by chunking it into recurring entities, we propose leveraging this…
A central goal of evolutionary biology is to explain the origins and distribution of diversity across life. Beyond species or genetic diversity, we also observe diversity in the circuits (genetic or otherwise) underlying complex functional…
Artificial intelligence algorithms are capable of fantastic exploits, yet they are still grossly inefficient compared with the brain's ability to learn from few exemplars or solve problems that have not been explicitly defined. What is the…
Humans and animals have the ability to continually acquire, fine-tune, and transfer knowledge and skills throughout their lifespan. This ability, referred to as lifelong learning, is mediated by a rich set of neurocognitive mechanisms that…
A hallmark of intelligence is the ability to autonomously learn new flexible, cognitive behaviors - that is, behaviors where the appropriate action depends not just on immediate stimuli (as in simple reflexive stimulus-response…
Human learning is a complex phenomenon requiring flexibility to adapt existing brain function and precision in selecting new neurophysiological activities to drive desired behavior. These two attributes -- flexibility and selection -- must…
Because human cognition is creative and socially situated, knowledge accumulates, diffuses, and gets applied in new contexts, generating cultural analogs of phenomena observed in population genetics such as adaptation and drift. It is…
Categorization is a fundamental function of minds, with wide ranging implications for the rest of the cognitive system. In humans, categories are shared and communicated between minds, thus requiring explanations at the population level. In…
The idea of incompetence as a learning or adaptation function was introduced in the context of evolutionary games as a fixed parameter. However, live organisms usually perform different nonlinear adaptation functions such as a power law or…
A hallmark of human intelligence is the ability to construct self-contained chunks of knowledge and adequately reuse them in novel combinations for solving different yet structurally related problems. Learning such compositional structures…
The quest to comprehend the origins of intelligence raises intriguing questions about the evolution of learning abilities in natural systems. Why do living organisms possess an inherent drive to acquire knowledge of the unknown? Is this…
How did the human species evolve the capacity not just to communicate complex ideas to one another but to hold such conversations from across the globe, using remote devices constructed from substances that do not exist in the natural…
Evolution and learning are two of the fundamental mechanisms by which life adapts in order to survive and to transcend limitations. These biological phenomena inspired successful computational methods such as evolutionary algorithms and…
A key issue in cognitive science concerns the fundamental psychological processes that underlie the formation and retrieval of multiple types of concepts in short-term and long-term memory (STM and LTM, respectively). We propose that…
Learning underlies nearly all human behavior and is central to education and education reform. Although recent advances in neuroscience have revealed the fundamental structure of learning processes, these insights have yet to be integrated…
Humans possess an inherent ability to chunk sequences into their constituent parts. In fact, this ability is thought to bootstrap language skills and learning of image patterns which might be a key to a more animal-like type of…
Animals can learn efficiently from a single experience and change their future behavior in response. However, in other instances, animals learn very slowly, requiring thousands of experiences. Here I survey tasks involving fast and slow…
Working memory often appears to exceed its basic span by organizing items into compact representations called chunks. Chunking can be learned over time for familiar inputs; however, it can also arise spontaneously for novel stimuli. Such…
The accumulation of adaptations in an open-ended manner during lifetime learning is a holy grail in reinforcement learning, intrinsic motivation, artificial curiosity, and developmental robotics. We present a specification for a cognitive…
Adapting to task changes without forgetting previous knowledge is a key skill for intelligent systems, and a crucial aspect of lifelong learning. Swarm controllers, however, are typically designed for specific tasks, lacking the ability to…