Categorization Is 'Baked' into the Brain
2 days ago
- #Predictive Processing
- #Categorization
- #Neuroscience
- Categorization is fundamental to adaptive behavior and involves grouping objects, organisms, actions, or events into equivalence clusters.
- The traditional view holds that categorization is the end stage of perception, starting with feature detection and ending with assigning stored memory representations.
- Converging evidence from neuroanatomy, electrophysiology, brain imaging, and cognitive science suggests an alternative: categorization occurs throughout signal processing, from the very beginning.
- Categorization is proposed as a core computational strategy of the brain, implemented via a neural context created by predictive feedback signals that organize feedforward processing.
- This perspective has implications for theory, future research, and understanding neuropsychiatric disorders.