Nearly all of the research investigating the modular nature of the mind/brain in general, and the acquisition of functional specializations in particular, is behavioral or neuroscientific in character. The progress of this research effort has been impeded by a lack of computational studies that attempt to relate functional properties with underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. Jacobs's research program has developed a family of computational architectures, referred to as mixtures-of- experts architectures, that acquire functional specializations by combining associative learning mechanisms and competitive learning mechanisms. Within the mixtures-of-experts computational framework, a surprising result is that the mechanisms underlying the acquisition of functional specializations and the mechanisms underlying the acquisition of modular integrations are identical. The goal of the proposed research is to develop these mechanisms for the purpose of acquiring modular integrations. Studies one through three investigate bootstrap learning; that is, the ability to use solutions to simpler tasks as """"""""building blocks"""""""" for more difficult tasks.
One aim of these studies is to investigate the role of context-dependent visual object representations in the acquisition of invariant visual representations. Studies four and five use the mixtures-of-experts architecture to investigate the aggregation of multiple expert opinions. In particular, they examine the issue of whether modular integrations during visual processing should be based on selection or on combination.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
First Independent Research Support & Transition (FIRST) Awards (R29)
Project #
5R29MH054770-04
Application #
2675384
Study Section
Perception and Cognition Review Committee (PEC)
Project Start
1995-07-01
Project End
2000-06-30
Budget Start
1998-07-01
Budget End
1999-06-30
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
1998
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Rochester
Department
Other Basic Sciences
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
208469486
City
Rochester
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
14627
Triesch, Jochen; Ballard, Dana H; Jacobs, Robert A (2002) Fast temporal dynamics of visual cue integration. Perception 31:421-34
Atkins, J E; Fiser, J; Jacobs, R A (2001) Experience-dependent visual cue integration based on consistencies between visual and haptic percepts. Vision Res 41:449-61
Meegan, D V; Aslin, R N; Jacobs, R A (2000) Motor timing learned without motor training. Nat Neurosci 3:860-2
Fine, I; Jacobs, R A (2000) Perceptual learning for a pattern discrimination task. Vision Res 40:3209-30
Jacobs, R A; Fine, I (1999) Experience-dependent integration of texture and motion cues to depth. Vision Res 39:4062-75
Fine, I; Jacobs, R A (1999) Modeling the combination of motion, stereo, and vergence angle cues to visual depth. Neural Comput 11:1297-330
Jacobs, R A (1999) Optimal integration of texture and motion cues to depth. Vision Res 39:3621-9
Jacobs, R A (1997) Bias/variance analyses of mixtures-of-experts architectures. Neural Comput 9:369-83
Jacobs, R A; Tanner, M A; Peng, F (1996) Bayesian inference for hierarchical mixtures-of-experts with applications to regression and classification. Stat Methods Med Res 5:375-90