BI 219 Xaq Pitkow: Principles and Constraints of Cognition

Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community . The Transmitter is an online publication that aims to deliver useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research. Visit thetransmitter.org to explore the latest neuroscience news and perspectives, written by journalists and scientists. Read more about our partnership . Sign up for Brain Inspired email alerts to be notified every time a new Brain Inspired episode is released. To explore more neuroscience news and perspectives, visit thetransmitter.org . Xaq Pitkow runs the Lab for the Algorithmic Brain at Carnegie Mellon University. The main theme of our discussion is how Xaq approaches his research into cognition by way of principles, from which his questions and models and methods spring forth. We discuss those principles, and In that light, we discuss some of his specific lines of work and ideas on the theoretical side of trying understand and explain a slew of cognitive processes. A few of the specifics we discuss are: How when we present tasks for organisms to solve, they use strategies that are suboptimal relative to the task, but nearly optimal relative to their beliefs about what they need to do - something Xaq calls inverse rational control. Probabilistic graph networks. How brains use probabilities to compute. A new ecological neuroscience project Xaq has started with multiple collaborators. LAB: Lab for the Algorithmic Brain . Related papers How does the brain compute with probabilities? Rational thoughts in neural codes. Control when confidence is costly Generalization of graph network inferences in higher-order graphical models . Attention when you need . Read the transcript . 0:00 - Intro 3:57 - Xaq's approach 8:28 - Inverse rational control 19:19 - Space of input-output functions 24:48 - Cognition for cognition 27:35 - Theory vs. experiment 40:32 - How does the brain compute with probabilities? 1:03:57 - Normative vs kludge 1:07:44 - Ecological neuroscience 1:20:47 - Representations 1:29:34 - Current projects 1:36:04 - Need a synaptome 1:42:20 - Across scales

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BI 219 Xaq Pitkow: Principles and Constraints of Cognition is an episode from Brain Inspired by Paul Middlebrooks.

This episode is 01:47:11 long.

This episode was published on Aug 27, 2025.

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