2026/06 - Attentional Regions, Policies, and Prediction Error

Video Discussions
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@vclay and @nleadholm discuss attentional regions, policies, and prediction error. They wonder about how to have Monty focus its attention on areas in space instead of discrete points. They discuss how attention relates to policies, gating sensory input, and voting. Specifically, the team explores how they could implement policies to stay on an object until it’s recognized to help with object recognition. There are high-level questions about how model-free policies are defined in the first place, and whether prediction error (both in the long and short term) could be used as a general framing.

Summary Video

Main Video

0:00 Introduction
1:35 Target Pose, Attention Area and how They Relate to Monty’s Policies
7:44 Adding Attended Regions and Gating
23:42 Are Attentional Areas Defined by a Set of Cortical Columns?
34:37 Are Attentional Areas Amorphous Followed by Narrowing Down Location?
40:03 “Stay on Object until Recognized” Policies
52:29 Could Modeling with Multiple Columns Instead of One Make The Problem Easier to Solve?
1:12:42 Using Model-Based Information to Define Attentional Regions
1:20:05 Voting and Anchoring Grid Cells
1:37:20 The Hypothesis Testing Policy and Other Model-Based Policies
1:48:48 Further Discussions

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Interesting talk, thanks.

Seems to me that attention is driven by other parts of the brain that determine what is considered to be important. Jeff’s example of not being able to stop your attention shifting to an unexpected sound is presumably a very basic survival instinct from the old brain. Looking around at the objects on a desk goes deeper than visual recognition. Each object must trigger awareness of what the object is used for, how it works etc. A mug is not just a visual image, to be a mug it must also light up memories of its use for drinking and the importance of drinking for survival. Imagine a wire frame mug. The shape would match that of a mug but other parts of the brain would realise that it is useless as a mug, creating a state of perhaps confusion, frustration or humour.

Alex

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