Adaptive Agents and Models of the Brain Functions

In the previous chapters we have presented the action of the adaptive agent at different orders with its abstract and functional image. Now we give a model of the action that is considered to be similar to the brain functions. We then argue that the brain is a model of the action of the adaptive agent. In an important paper Alexandre Pouger and Lawrence H. Snyder [14] use the basis functions as the main frame to model brain functions. In the abstract of the paper they state:

“Behaviours such as sensing an object and then moving your eyes or hand toward it require that sensory information be used to help generate a motor command, a process known as a sensorimotor transformation. Here we review models of sensorimotor transformations that use a flexible intermediate representation that relies on

basis function

. The use of basis function as an intermediate is borrowed from the theory of non linear function approximation. We show that this approach provides a unifying insight into the neural basis of three crucial aspects of sensorimotor transformations, namely, computation, learning and short term memory. This mathematical formalism is consistent with the responses of cortical neurons and provides a fresh perspective on the issue of frames of reference in spatial representations”.