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Lecture Notes
Chapter 1

• Nervous system
  • Computes and stores aspects of the environment
  • Internal world represents external world

• Common to all mobile animals
• Navigation
  • e.g., Foraging and predation, shelter, mating, migration, etc.
• Brain structures linked to spatial representation
• Path integration (dead reckoning)
• Piloting
• Cognitive maps

• Necessary in navigation
• Other behavioural processes
  • e.g., Feeding, mating, resting, etc.
• Exogenous clocks
  • e.g., Sun, moon, seasons
• Endogenous clocks
  • Internal clocks; circadian rhytms
  • Representations by:
    1. Subtraction method
    2. Pulse generator

• Counting, reinforcement schedules, foraging
• Higher cognition or underlying neurophysiology?

• Applies computational-representational approach

Gallistel's approach

• Biological
  • Natural selection
  • Adaptation
• Mathematical
  • Isomorphisms
• Synthetic
  • Combinational
  • Underlying, elementary processes
  • Hierarchical
  • Gestalt-like

• Formal correspondence between distinct systems of mathematical study

• The capacity of one system to represent another is put to use

• Represented system
• Representing system
• e.g., environment (represented) and brain (representing)