Brain Functional Architecture and Human Understanding

Abstract

The opening line in Aristotle’s Metaphysics asserts that “humans desire to understand”, establishing understanding as the defining characteristic of the human mind and human species. What is understanding and what role does it play in cognition, what advantages does it confer, what brain mechanisms are involved? The Webster’s Dictionary defines understanding as “apprehending general relations in a multitude of particulars.” A proposal discussed in this chapter defines understanding as a form of active inference in self-adaptive systems seeking to expand their inference domains while minimizing metabolic costs incurred in the expansions. Under the same proposal, understanding is viewed as an advanced adaptive mechanism involving self-directed construction of mental models establishing relations between domain entities. Understanding complements learning and serves to overcome the inertia of learned behavior when conditions are unfamiliar or deviate from those experienced in the past. While learning is common across all animals, understanding is unique to the human species. This chapter will unpack these notions, focusing on different facets of understanding. The proposal formulates hypotheses regarding the underlying neuronal mechanisms, attempting to assess their plausibility and reconcile them with the recent ideas and findings concerning brain functional architecture.

Situational Understanding in the Human and the Machine

“…Consistent with the recent analysis of different kinds of free energy in the Bayesian account of cognition ( Gottwald and Braun, 2020 ), the VAN model establishes reciprocity between the minimization of variational free energy and minimization of thermodynamic free energy in the neuronal system ( Yufik and Friston, 2016 ; Yufik et al, 2016 ). Tentatively, the approach suggested unity of or a close relation between the mechanisms of sensori-motor coordination ( Sparrow and Irizarry-Lopez, 1987 ; Sparrow and Newell, 1998 ; Sparrow et al, 2007 ; Latash, 2008 , 2021 ), cortical coordination ( Bressler and Kelso, 2001 ) and coordination in mental models ( Yufik and Friston, 2016 ; Yufik, 2019 , 2021a , b ). Finally, the approach informs design of operator support in complex dynamics tasks ( Yufik and Hartzell, 1989 ; Yufik and Sheridan, 1997 ; Landry et al, 2001 ; Yufik and Sheridan, 2002 ) using a transparent mathematical formalism ( Yufik, 1998 ).…”

“…Boundary energy barriers bound evidence for the corresponding object ( Yufik and Friston, 2016 ; Yufik, 2019 , 2021a , b ). More precisely, recognition confidence associated with firing a neuron is a function of the corresponding probability μ i h in the neuron’s receptive field and the strength of neuron’s attachment to (correlation with) other neurons in the packet.…”

“…In short, planning (as inference). This idea is not original but suggestions concerning the structure of the models and the underlying neuronal mechanisms are ( Yufik, 1996 , 1998 ; Yufik and Friston, 2016 ; Yufik, 2018 , 2021b ). Figure 2 introduces some key notions in the proposal, seeking to position mechanisms of awareness and mental modeling within the brain’s functional architecture.…”