Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0140525X01000103

The Theory of Event Coding (TEC): a framework for perception and action planning.

The syndrome of contralesional neglect reflects a lateralized disruption of spatial attention. In the human, the left hemisphere shifts attention predominantly in the contralateral hemispace and in a contraversive direction whereas the right hemisphere distributes attention more evenly, in both hemispaces and both directions. As a consequence of this asymmetry, severe contralesional neglect occurs almost exclusively after right hemisphere lesions. Patients with left neglect experience a loss of salience in the mental representation and conscious perception of the left side and display a reluctance to direct orientating and exploratory behaviours to the left. Neglect is distributed according to egocentric, allocentric, world-centred, and object-centred frames of reference. Neglected events can continue to exert an implicit influence on behaviour, indicating that the attentional filtering occurs at the level of an internalized representation rather than at the level of peripheral sensory input. The unilateral neglect syndrome is caused by a dysfunction of a large-scale neurocognitive network, the cortical epicentres of which are located in posterior parietal cortex, the frontal eye fields, and the cingulate gyrus. This network coordinates all aspects of spatial attention, regardless of the modality of input or output. It helps to compile a mental representation of extrapersonal events in terms of their motivational salience, and to generate 'kinetic strategies' so that the attentional focus can shift from one target to another.

/pdf/spatial-attention-and-neglect-parietal-frontal-and-cingulate-3urebfqlps.pdf

Spatial attention and neglect: parietal, frontal and cingulate contributions to the mental representation and attentional targeting of salient extrapersonal events.

The majority of synapses in the mammalian cortex originate from cortical neurons. Indeed, the largest input to cortical cells comes from neighboring excitatory cells. However, most models of cortical development and processing do not reflect the anatomy and physiology of feedback excitation and are restricted to serial feedforward excitation. This report describes how populations of neurons in cat visual cortex can use excitatory feedback, characterized as an effective "network conductance", to amplify their feedforward input signals and demonstrates how neuronal discharge can be kept proportional to stimulus strength despite strong, recurrent connections that threaten to cause runaway excitation. These principles are incorporated into models of cortical direction and orientation selectivity that emphasize the basic design principles of cortical architectures.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/269/5226/981.full.pdf

Recurrent excitation in neocortical circuits.

To describe phenomena that occur at different time scales, computational models of the brain necessarily must incorporate different levels of abstraction. We argue that at time scales of approximately one-third of a second, orienting movements of the body play a crucial role in cognition and form a useful computational level, termed the embodiment level. At this level, the constraints of the body determine the nature of cognitive operations, since the natural sequentiality of body movements can be matched to the natural computational economies of sequential decision systems. The way this is done is through a system of implicit reference termed deictic, whereby pointing movements are used to bind objects in the world to cognitive programs. We show how deictic bindings enable the solution of natural tasks and argue that one of the central features of cognition, working memory, can be related to moment-by-moment dispositions of body features such as eye movements and hand movements.

/pdf/deictic-codes-for-the-embodiment-of-cognition-3oclexjq5w.pdf

Deictic Codes for the Embodiment of Cognition

This article reviews and interprets neuronal activities related to the expectation and delivery of reward in the primate orbitofrontal cortex, in comparison with slowly discharging neurons in the striatum (caudate, putamen and ventral striatum, including nucleus accumbens) and midbrain dopamine neurons. Orbitofrontal neurons showed three principal forms of reward-related activity during the performance of delayed response tasks, namely responses to reward-predicting instructions, activations during the expectation period immediately preceding reward and responses following reward. These activations discriminated between different rewards, often on the basis of the animals' preferences. Neurons in the striatum were also activated in relation to the expectation and detection of reward but in addition showed activities related to the preparation, initiation and execution of movements which reflected the expected reward. Dopamine neurons responded to rewards and reward-predicting stimuli, and coded an error in the prediction of reward. Thus, the investigated cortical and basal ganglia structures showed multiple, heterogeneous, partly simultaneous activations which were related to specific aspects of rewards. These activations may represent the neuronal substrates of rewards during learning and established behavioral performance. The processing of reward expectations suggests an access to central representations of rewards which may be used for the neuronal control of goaldirected behavior.

/pdf/reward-processing-in-primate-orbitofrontal-cortex-and-basal-l50fqnyvq4.pdf

Reward Processing in Primate Orbitofrontal Cortex and Basal Ganglia

Object-centered spatial awareness--awareness of the location, relative to an object, of its parts--plays an important role in many aspects of perception, imagination, and action. One possible basis for this capability is the existence in the brain of neurons with sensory receptive fields or motor action fields that are defined relative to an object-centered frame. In experiments described here, neuronal activity was monitored in the supplementary eye field of macaque monkeys making eye movements to the right or left end of a horizontal bar. Neurons were found to fire differentially as a function of the end of the bar to which an eye movement was made. This is direct evidence for the existence of neurons sensitive to the object-centered direction of movements.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/269/5226/985.full.pdf

SN Gettner

Papers

Object-centered direction selectivity in the macaque supplementary eye field