Prof. Fred Hamker | Models of basal ganglia and the role of cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical loops for working memory, consciousness and categorisation: A neuro-computational approach

The basal ganglia form multiple loops with cortex, which are involved in cognitive processes and motor control. I will initially provide an overview of basal ganglia circuits and models. Next, I demonstrate examples of how the basal ganglia may be involved in cognitive processes such as working memory, consciousness and categorization. Further, I will address basal ganglia dysfunction in Parkinson's and Huntington's disease. In our more recent work, we illustrate how the basal ganglia (BG) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) are involved in category learning. Our model replicates behavioral and physiological data of macaque monkeys tested on a prototype distortion task by Antzoulatos & Miller, Neuron (2011). Our results further support the hypothesis, that the BG trains the PFC to acquire category knowledge. Due to its fast learning the BG can quickly find a good solution and further train the PFC to reach a high generalization performance. Novel predictions of the model are tested with the original data of Antzoulatos & Miller (2011).

Poster