Parr Thomas
Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
Entropy (Basel). 2020 May 11;22(5):536. doi: 10.3390/e22050536.
In recent years, the "planning as inference" paradigm has become central to the study of behaviour. The advance offered by this is the formalisation of motivation as a prior belief about "how I am going to act". This paper provides an overview of the factors that contribute to this prior. These are rooted in optimal experimental design, information theory, and statistical decision making. We unpack how these factors imply a functional architecture for motivated behaviour. This raises an important question: how can we put this architecture to work in the service of understanding observed neurobiological structure? To answer this question, we draw from established techniques in experimental studies of behaviour. Typically, these examine the influence of perturbations of the nervous system-which include pathological insults or optogenetic manipulations-to see their influence on behaviour. Here, we argue that the message passing that emerges from inferring what to do can be similarly perturbed. If a given perturbation elicits the same behaviours as a focal brain lesion, this provides a functional interpretation of empirical findings and an anatomical grounding for theoretical results. We highlight examples of this approach that influence different sorts of goal-directed behaviour, active learning, and decision making. Finally, we summarise their implications for the neuroanatomy of inferring what to do (and what not to).
近年来，“规划即推理”范式已成为行为研究的核心。这一范式带来的进步在于将动机形式化为一种关于“我将如何行动”的先验信念。本文概述了促成这种先验信念的因素。这些因素植根于最优实验设计、信息论和统计决策。我们剖析了这些因素如何暗示一种动机行为的功能架构。这就引出了一个重要问题：我们如何将这种架构应用于理解所观察到的神经生物学结构？为了回答这个问题，我们借鉴行为实验研究中的既定技术。通常，这些技术会研究神经系统扰动（包括病理损伤或光遗传学操作）的影响，以观察其对行为的作用。在此，我们认为从推断做什么中产生的信息传递也能以类似方式受到扰动。如果给定的扰动引发的行为与局灶性脑损伤相同，这就为实证研究结果提供了功能解释，并为理论结果提供了解剖学依据。我们重点介绍这种方法影响不同类型目标导向行为、主动学习和决策的例子。最后，我们总结它们对推断做什么（以及不做什么）的神经解剖学的影响。
