Brains vs. Computers (lectures 1 and 2)

The state of the art for robots manipulating things in a slightly uncontrolled environment. The DRC Finals , Video

Optional

  • When robots are better than humans. Tesla car factory

  • The first of a series of vids on machine learning (the neural nets being used widely in industry, for everything from detecting cancer in x-rays to matching prospective romantic partners and personalizing marketing.

  • 2015 Robo Cup, Video

  • the best rant about Henry Markram’s boondoggle. Note that it’s a rant and probably overstates the case.

  • “early AI researchers made a big mistake: they thought intelligence was stuff they found hard to do” - Rodney Brooks video

  • O’Reilly, R. C., Munakata, Y., Frank, M. J., Hazy, T. E., et al. (2012). Computational Cognitive Neuroscience. Free: http://ccnbook.colorado.edu

  • Future AI risk: Bostrom and Harris TED talks

Optional readings for the tutorial – Simulating Lil’ Brains

Maps in your brain (lectures 3 and 4)

On Canvas eReserve, “Carlson, 2010 excerpts” (not Tom Carlson, a different Carlson!), Physiology of Behavior 10th edition:

If it doesn’t work, just read the “Coordinate transformations” part of the PDF version and skim the rest of it.

Neglect and the parietal lobe:

The fact that some patients suffering from unilateral neglect also experience left representational neglect, affecting their imagery and their memory performance, was first reported by Bisiach & Luzzatti (1978), who asked two neglect patients to imagine being in the Piazza Del Duomo, a well known square in Milan, the patients’ native city, and to describe the buildings and other features around the square. (One of the patients was also questioned about the items in “the studio where he had spent most of his life,” with very similar results.) When asked to imagine that they were standing on the steps of the cathedral that is at one end of the Piazza, nearly all of the features mentioned, by both subjects, were ones that would have been to their right from that viewpoint, and very few things on the left were recalled. When asked to imagine standing at the opposite end of the square, facing the cathedral, most of the features they mentioned were ones on the other, previously neglected, side, which was now to their right. Presumably, the patients were forming a mental image of the Piazza, as viewed from the specified location, and attempting to read off the features around it from their imagery. Clearly knowledge of features on both sides (presumably mostly gained before they became ill) was in their memory, but they were unable to access all of it normally from their imagery.

Optional

Ramachandran V.S. and Blakeslee, S. (1998). Phantoms in the brain

  • Ch. 6 (neglect), accessible via the course readings link on Blackboard
  • Ch. 7 (anosognosia- not important, but cool)