in neurobiology era
"I am my brain"
And my brain is genomics and ontology.
http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/mark_dean/Working_Paper_5.pdf
"The theory and data available today indicate that the phasic
activity of midbrain dopamine neurons encodes a reward
prediction error used to guide learning throughout the frontal
cortex and the basal ganglia. Activity in these dopaminergic
neurons is now believed to signal that a subject’s estimate of the
value of current and future events is in error and indicate the
magnitude of this error. This is a kind of combined signal that
most scholars active in dopamine studies believe adjusts synaptic
strengths in a quantitative manner until the subject’s estimate of
the value of current and future events is accurately encoded in
the frontal cortex and basal ganglia. Although some confusion
remains within the larger neuroscience community, very little
data exist that are incompatible with this hypothesis. This review
provides a brief overview of the explanatory synergy between
behavioral, anatomical, physiological, and biophysical data that
has been forged by recent computational advances. For a more
detailed treatment of this hypothesis, refer to Niv and Montague
(1) or Dayan and Abbot (2)."
