Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T16:39:22.385Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Neural coding: The bureaucratic model of the brain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2019

Romain Brette Open the ORCID record for Romain Brette [Opens in a new window]
Romain Brette*
Affiliation:
Institut de la Vision, Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, INSERM, CNRS, 75012Paris, France. [email protected]://romainbrette.fr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The neural coding metaphor is so ubiquitous that we tend to forget its metaphorical nature. What do we mean when we assert that neurons encode and decode? What kind of causal and representational model of the brain does the metaphor entail? What lies beneath the neural coding metaphor, I argue, is a bureaucratic model of the brain.

Type
Author's Response
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 42 , 2019 , e243
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andersen, F., Anjum, R.L. & Rocca, E. (2019) Philosophical bias is the one bias that science cannot avoid. eLife 8:e44929. doi:10.7554/eLife.44929.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anderson, M. L. & Chemero, T. (2013) The problem with brain GUTs: Conflation of different senses of “prediction” threatens metaphysical disaster. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(3):204–205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barlow, H. (1961) Possible principles underlying the transformations of sensory messages. In: Sensory communication, ed. Rosenblith, W., pp. 217–34. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bell, A. J. (1999) Levels and loops: The future of artificial intelligence and neuroscience. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 354:2013–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benichoux, V., Rébillat, M. & Brette, R. (2016) On the variation of interaural time differences with frequency. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 139(4):1810–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benichoux, V. & Tollin, D. J. (2018) These are not the neurons you are looking for. eLife 7:e39244. doi:10.7554/eLife.39244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickhard, M. H. (2009) The interactivist model. Synthese 166(3):547–91. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9375-x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brette, R. (2015) Philosophy of the spike: Rate-based vs. spike-based theories of the brain. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 9:151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, R. A. (1991a) Intelligence without representation. Artificial Intelligence 47(1–3):139–59. doi:10.1016/0004-3702(91)90053-M.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chemero, A. (2011) Radical embodied cognitive science. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clark, A. & Toribio, J. (1994) Doing without representing? Synthese 101:401–31. doi:10.1007/BF01063896.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franken, T. P., Joris, P. X. & Smith, P. H. (2018) Principal cells of the brainstem's interaural sound level detector are temporal differentiators rather than integrators. eLife 7:e33854. doi:10.7554/eLife.33854.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gastinger, M. J., Tian, N., Horvath, T. & Marshak, D. W. (2006) Retinopetal axons in mammals: Emphasis on histamine and serotonin. Current Eye Research 31:655–67. doi:10.1080/02713680600776119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gibson, J. J. (1979) The ecological approach to visual perception. Routledge.Google Scholar
Gilbert, C. D. & Li, W. (2013) Top-down influences on visual processing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 14:350–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gomez-Marin, A. (2017) Causal circuit explanations of behavior: Are necessity and sufficiency necessary and sufficient? In: Decoding neural circuit structure and function, ed. Çelik, A. & Wernet, M. F., pp. 283–306. Springer. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-57363-2_11. [Accessed June 27, 2018.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, G. (1994) Workable gears, Archimedian solids and planar bipartite graphs. The American Mathematical Monthly 101:527–34. doi:10.2307/2975318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hofman, P. M. & Van Opstal, A. J. (1998) Spectro-temporal factors in two-dimensional human sound localization. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 103:2634–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Joris, P. X. & Yin, T. C. (1995) Envelope coding in the lateral superior olive. I. Sensitivity to interaural time differences. Journal of Neurophysiology 73:1043–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laughlin, S. (1981) A simple coding procedure enhances a neuron's information capacity. Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C 36:910–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lettvin, J. Y., Maturana, H. R., McCulloch, W. S. & Pitts, W. H. (1959) What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain. Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 47:1940–51. doi:10.1109/JRPROC.1959.287207.Google Scholar
Marr, D. (1982b) Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Martyushev, L. M. (2018) Living systems do not minimize free energy: Comment on “Answering Schrödinger's question: A free-energy formulation” by Maxwell James Dèsormeau Ramstead et al. Physics of Life Review 24:40–41. doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2017.11.010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maturana, H. R. & Varela, F. J. (1973) Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. D. Reidel.Google Scholar
Populin, L. C. & Yin, T. C. T. (1998) Behavioral studies of sound localization in the cat. The Journal of Neuroscience 18:2147–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Powers, W. T. (1973a) Behavior: The control of perception. Aldine.Google Scholar
Sabin, A. T., Macpherson, E. A. & Middlebrooks, J. C. (2005) Human sound localization at near-threshold levels. Hearing Research 199:124–34. doi:10.1016/j.heares.2004.08.001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sober, S. J., Sponberg, S., Nemenman, I. & Ting, L. H. (2018) Millisecond spike timing codes for motor control. Trends in Neurosciences 41:644–8. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2018.08.010.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sterling, P. (2012) Allostasis: A model of predictive regulation. Physiology & Behavior 106:5–15. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2011.06.004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterling, P. & Laughlin, S. (2015) Principles of neural design. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tang, C., Chehayeb, D., Srivastava, K., Nemenman, I. & Sober, S. J. (2014) Millisecond-scale motor encoding in a cortical vocal area. PLOS Biology 12:e1002018. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, E., Palacios, A. & Varela, F. J. (1992) Ways of coloring: Comparative color vision as a case study for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 15:1–26. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00067248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsai, J. J., Koka, K. & Tollin, D. J. (2010) Varying overall sound intensity to the two ears impacts interaural level difference discrimination thresholds by single neurons in the lateral superior olive. Journal of Neurophysiology 103:875–86. doi:10.1152/jn.00911.2009.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Gelder, T. (1995) What might cognition be, if not computation? Journal of Philosophy 92(7):345–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Gelder, T. (1998) The dynamical hypothesis in cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21(5):615–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varela, F. G., Maturana, H. R. & Uribe, R. (1974) Autopoiesis: The organization of living systems, its characterization and a model. Biosystems 5:187–96. doi:10.1016/0303-2647(74)90031-8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wark, B., Lundstrom, B. N. & Fairhall, A. (2007) Sensory adaptation. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 17:423–29. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2007.07.001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weber, M. (1978) Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wood, C. C. (2019) The computational stance in biology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 374:20180380. doi:10.1098/rstb.2018.0380.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yoshihara, M. & Yoshihara, M. (2018) “Necessary and sufficient” in biology is not necessarily necessary – Confusions and erroneous conclusions resulting from misapplied logic in the field of biology, especially neuroscience. Journal of Neurogenetics 32:53–64. doi:10.1080/01677063.2018.1468443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yost, W. A. & Zhong, X. (2014) Sound source localization identification accuracy: Bandwidth dependencies. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 136:2737–46. doi:10.1121/1.4898045.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhurov, Y. & Brezina, V. (2006) Variability of motor neuron spike timing maintains and shapes contractions of the accessory radula closer muscle of aplysia. Journal of Neuroscience 26:7056–70. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5277-05.2006.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed