Selectionist and evolutionary approaches to brain function: a critical appraisal.

Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
Chrisantha FernandoPhil Husbands

Abstract

We consider approaches to brain dynamics and function that have been claimed to be Darwinian. These include Edelman's theory of neuronal group selection, Changeux's theory of synaptic selection and selective stabilization of pre-representations, Seung's Darwinian synapse, Loewenstein's synaptic melioration, Adam's selfish synapse, and Calvin's replicating activity patterns. Except for the last two, the proposed mechanisms are selectionist but not truly Darwinian, because no replicators with information transfer to copies and hereditary variation can be identified in them. All of them fit, however, a generalized selectionist framework conforming to the picture of Price's covariance formulation, which deliberately was not specific even to selection in biology, and therefore does not imply an algorithmic picture of biological evolution. Bayesian models and reinforcement learning are formally in agreement with selection dynamics. A classification of search algorithms is shown to include Darwinian replicators (evolutionary units with multiplication, heredity, and variability) as the most powerful mechanism for search in a sparsely occupied search space. Examples are given of cases where parallel competitive search with information t...Continue Reading

Citations

Dec 27, 2015·Trends in Ecology & Evolution·Richard A Watson, Eörs Szathmáry
Aug 21, 2013·Cognitive Science·Chrisantha Fernando
Aug 25, 2015·Frontiers in Psychology·Anna FedorMichael Öllinger
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Jun 5, 2016·Trends in Cognitive Sciences·Karl Friston, Gyorgy Buzsáki
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Oct 4, 2020·Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology·Denis Noble
Jul 20, 2021·Trends in Microbiology·Rik VerdonckHervé Philippe

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Software Mentioned

Changeux
JMS
NGS
SEA
DEA
TSSP

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