Events / Latent Causes, Prediction Errors, and the Organization of Memory, Yael Niv, PhD (Princeton University)

Latent Causes, Prediction Errors, and the Organization of Memory, Yael Niv, PhD (Princeton University)

12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m.
Moore Auditorium, North Building, 4580 Scott Ave, St. Louis, MO 63110

Yael Niv

Yael Niv, PhD
Professor
Department of Psychology
Princeton University

Hosted by: Julia Pai and Department of Neuroscience Trainees

This talk will be presented in-person and via Zoom.
Webinar link: https://bit.ly/DoNSeminarSeries

No two events are alike. But still, we learn, which means that we implicitly decide what events are similar enough that experience with one can inform us about what to do in another. We have suggested that this relies on an implicit parsing of incoming information into “clusters” according to inferred hidden (latent) causes. Moreover, we have suggested that unexpected information (that is, a prediction error) is key to this separation into clusters. In this talk, I will demonstrate these ideas through behavioral experiments showing evidence for clustering in animals and humans, and illustrating the effects of prediction errors on the organization of memory. I will then tie the different findings together into a hypothesis about how information about events is organized in our brain.

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