The evolutionary history of integrated perception, cognition, and action

Can’t find those slides or illustrations easily. Most seem to revolve around the work of Luis Puelles or some shared efforts around him (and his so called ‘prosomeric’ model), if you want to dig those with me.

Could this be the slide deck you are looking for?

A useful search trick, google "paul cisek slides’

You can put all kinds of interesting things in your “slides” search.
Oh, and you may like this slide set too!

I have been reading Stephen Grossberg for years - he has many interesting ideas.

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I swear I did !

Unfortunately no, I’m trying to find the other one… from “The evolutionary history of integrated perception, cognition, and action” video. There were slides showing nice colored successive steps along our line, with hypothalamus, evo of pallium, etc.


Does this help?
Google: paul cisek telencephalic foraging system
Show as images.
Many similar, but not exact hits.

Also - affordances …

@rhyolight

I think that Paul Cisek would be an excellent choice for your “interview with a neuroscientist” series.
http://www.cisek.org/pavel/

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We’ve reached to P. Cisek and may be able to get some illustrations after all.

In the meantime, I’ve started to read the most excellent book “The Evolution of Memory Systems, Ancestors, Anatomy, and Adaptations” by Murray, Wise and Graham.
https://books.google.fr/books/about/The_Evolution_of_Memory_Systems.html?id=rcpLDQAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y

Really a very nice read so far, and I’d advise anyone to have a look.

I’m frustrated by a missing puzzle piece for my understanding, however.
In their description of an evolution line, they’d present (with a terminology I won’t embrace yet if you didn’t read the book) some basic universal capacity (as in, almost any-animal-with-NN across all lineages) as a first component of learning (or memory).
Somehow they tie this first component to pavlovian findings. I’m not disputing the claim, however for it to be possible at all, in some of the examples cited, it seems to me that there should be some form of… “retainment” (don’t want to use “memory” there yet) of a sensory condition, long enough to tie it to a “future” (how long, btw?) valued outcome.
Some STM, if you wish.

Being here on this forum, next best thing beyond such conceptual knowledge is… I’m mostly interested in how to model it, so it’s quite important to me that we’d be able to describe such retainment system in very very basal - and basic - NNs.
Yet the only pavlovian experiment on a “small and simple” being + neurological result I found so far seems to involve the wiring of a sensory input with a (sadly) concomitant internal representation:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982219303872

“Sadly” cuz, whatever the internal representation, I’d have no problem imagining wiring it to “current sensory input”.

Wiring it to some “past (even recent past) sensory input” is what eludes me.

Any idea on this, anyone ?
Recall we’re speaking here of very primitive NNs, so if that idea could just… not-include HC, that would be neat.

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Firstly, thank you for originally posting Cisek’s work to this forum. I have consumed all of it that I could find and it really resonates with me.

In my reading of Cisek’s paper “Resynthesizing behavior through phylogenetic refinement” he does seem (to me) to emphasize the role of the olfactory system in the development of the hippocampus. But perhaps that’s just me reading too much between the lines (?) He does state in the paper that “the present article will merely present a basic sketch”, which he intends to build on over the years. I look forward to future papers from him elaborating these ideas.

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I’ve found some additional related material y’all might be interested in.
First, here are 2 more talks and an interview on YouTube:




In that last one he mentions he’s writing a book! I look forward to that.

Finally, the “Unsupervised Thinking” podcast discussed his most recent paper, linked in the previous post: (Episode 48)
http://unsupervisedthinkingpodcast.blogspot.com/

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In private communication with Doctor Cisek he mentions the important role of the olfactory system but felt that with limited time in a talk that bringing this in would take too long.

He intends to cover the olfactory system in much greater detail in the book he is working on now.

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Excellent! It is very interesting to me to think about early terrestrial animals facing new navigational challenges and how their brains responded evolutionary. Perhaps we can thank a nocturnal ancestor for some of our neural innovations. I wonder if the “long night” faced by the surviving mammals after the KT extinction event played a significant role.

That period likely played its part, but I’d cast some doubts about it being night vision. Current understanding seems to indicate that we mammals had been nocturnal for quite some time, and that diurnality only returned to our line with anthropoids (new&old world monkeys, apes, and us)

Thanks for the additional information, very interesting. For clarification, rather than “night vision”, I was referring to the development of brain structures for navigation that aren’t dependent at all on vision but instead can make use of non-visual senses such as olfaction, whiskers, etc. It seems to me that if you can’t see (much) you are more reliant on the ability to build internal models of the environment to facilitate navigation. Hence the link highlighted by @Bitking between olfaction and the hippocampus.

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I’d need to read some material again to be sure, but iirc it is thought there were also large enhancements to those auditory, olfactory, and somato- (eg. whiskers) sensory pathways at the time of the mammalian ancestor already (long before KT).

That being said, involvement of the HC with olfactory pathway is likely antediluvian compared to that. @Bitking calls for a model taking these old loops into account. That would be sometime towards the vertebrate or chordate split. (fishes, anyone? ^^)

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If this approach interests you here are some additional papers from researchers that were mentioned by Dr. Cisek:

New perspectives on the hippocampus and memory

Zounds! $90!

http://cvcl.mit.edu/SUNSeminar/JacobsSchenk-CogMap-PsyRev03.pdf

I think that from the general topic you will find these interesting:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8526836_The_evolutionary_origin_of_the_mammalian_isocortex_Towards_an_integrated_developmental_and_functional_approach

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304394017303786

So many papers, so little time!

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Wow, thanks for all that! So little time indeed… I guess now I know what I’ll be reading for the next month :wink:

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Wanted to draw a first plate about very early animals, and the evolution of early neurons and muscles, for integrating the first steps of P. Cisek’s model into it, but there are considerable ongoing debates on these questions…

Some lineages, whose molecular studies reveal as more ancient than seemingly “more primitive” others, show muscle and nerve cells… skipping a clade or two before muscle and nerve cells are found again… so it’s quite complicated to make sense of a sequence of events in this. Also, those splits happened long before the times for which we’re able to find fossils (and as a matter of fact involve soft-bodied animals only), exacerbating the fundamental issue with paleontology studies:


(one strip from The Far Side by Gary Larson)

The following main animal clades seem consensual, but the relationships between these seem to inspire as many theoretical models as there are combinations. Or close:

  • Deuterostomia (leading to vertebrates => us)
  • Protostomia (molluscs, arthropods, annelids)
  • Xenacoelomorpha (quite simple multicellular things, basal bilaterians?)
  • Cnidaria (sea anemones, jellyfishes)
  • Placozoa (simplest of all)
  • Porifera (sponges)
  • Ctenophora (comb jellies)

There seems to be some consensus that Deuterostomia and Protostomia together, excluding all other above, makes a valid clade (we’ll call that Bilateria for now)… and that this clade in turn, together with Cnidaria, would forme a clade excluding sponges and comb jellies… but Xenacoelomorpha could be inserted as basal bilaterians, or even deuterostomes, and Placozoa + Cnidaria could turn out to be an all-exclusive clade, too.

So, although I believe that the following plate by Dr P. Cisek is a very good call for the evolution of early nervous systems, there are still some uncertainties and the possible emergence of simpler lineages at various points in-between the proposed steps. The neural arrangement of the ancestral bilaterian, here seen with simple and ventral “BNS”, may also be challenged.


In blue, BNS: Blastoporal Nervous System, responsible for locomotion and ingestion.
In tan, ANS: Apical Nervous System, with photosensitive and chemosensitive receptors, and controlling energy homeostasis.

ANS would in particular be able to know about “hunger” and availability of food in the immediate environment, signalling with dopamine whether the BNS should behave in “exploit” (feeding there) or “explore” (go somewhere else) mode… (cf. Levy walks).

Whether metabolic or behavioral, P. Cisek stresses that each function should not be studied as “input-output”, but as part of a “loop” whose purpose is always a return to an equilibrium. Eg. “exploration” : moving towards a place with more food, if successful, will ultimately allow to reduce hunger, lowering the need to continue exploring. Those loops can (and will) interact together (or support each other, as with the loop for “feeding” in the above example).

The fusion of ANS and BNS happening in the rostral part of the critter would form the basis for a “brain”, which will evolve afterwards, in the various bilaterian lineages.

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Some newer and better quality video (with an integrated slide player of some kind) for a presentation of the evolutionary view.

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Researching Paul Cisek’s papers in preparation for upcoming journal club (Affordance Competition Hypothesis).

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Matt is live streaming regularly

Paul Cisek allowed us to get a first hand peek at his poster, to be presented at Society for Neuroscience meeting next week :sunglasses:

(this image should be clickable to increased resolution if you wait a little while, but I did not manage to upload an even better one, to read the smallest characters)

[edit] Trying to host with better resolution, click for a high-res view…

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