How does the brain – this complex biological system – produce the thoughts, perceptions, and decisions that shape our experience of the world? In this chapter, we explore how cognitive scientists build computation models to reverse-engineer cognition.

So far in this course, we’ve explored the philosophical foundations, evolutionary constraints and development of cognition. In this chapter, we’re going to dive into cognitive science asking questions like: What computations could happen in the brain when we perceive an object? How are raw sensory signals transformed into meaningful concepts? Or what is actually an internal mental representation? In the introductory video below, we outline the structure of this chapter and provide an overview of what you can expect to learn.

Author: Fabian Müller