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Neural Signaling of Probabilistic Vectors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Nicholas Shea
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Abstract

Recent work combining cognitive neuroscience with computational modeling suggests that distributed patterns of neural firing may represent probability distributions. This article asks, what makes it the case that distributed patterns of firing, as well as carrying information about (correlating with) probability distributions over worldly parameters, represent such distributions? In examples of probabilistic population coding, it is the way information is used in downstream processing so as to lead to successful behavior. In these cases content depends on factors beyond bare information, contra Brian Skyrms’s view that representational content can be fully characterized in information-theoretic terms.

Type
Signaling Theory in Biological and Cognitive Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , December 2014 , pp. 902 - 913
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

For comments on the paper the author is grateful to the other participants in the symposium on “Signaling within the Organism” at PSA 2012: Brett Calcott, Rosa Cao, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and Rory Smead; to the audience at the PSA; and also to an audience at King’s College London. The author would particularly like to thank Peter Godfrey-Smith for convening the symposium.

References

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