Dear Brandon,

            Yours is perhaps the most important question in the neurobiology of behavior.  I have dealt with it extensively in my research and in numerous writings; it is at the very center of the cognitive neuroscience of the cerebral cortex.  Here I will answer it as succinctly and critically as I possibly can, trying not to sound simplistic or sententious.  Almost all your tentative assumptions are basically correct and compatible with one another and with my answer below. Let me attempt to qualify them a bit and to support them with a few brain facts.

            Indeed, Helmholtz was right.  We remember what we perceive, and we perceive—intuitively or unconsciously--what we remember.  This is increasingly apparent to cognitive neuroscientists if we adhere to the empirical facts and put consciousness in its proper place, that is, by accepting that it is not essential to neural mechanisms but an epiphenomenon of them.  Most cognition is totally unconscious.  In any case, my argument here is centered precisely on a conjecture that you almost inconspicuously pose as a question: actions and cognition are interdependent cyclically.

1.  In the course of goal-directed behavior, the neural mechanisms that adapt the organism to its world in pursuit of the goal are cyclic, embedded in what I call the “perception-action (PA) cycle.” This is the biocybernetic cycle--with sensors, effectors, feed-forward and feedback--that from moment to moment adjusts the organism to the environment in pursuit of the goal.  Briefly, in the course of that pursuit, a given sensory stimulus comes through the senses, is analyzed in posterior (perceptual) cortex, and informs a new or corrective action in frontal (executive) cortex; that action will produce sensory changes in the environment, which will inform new or corrective action, and so on and so forth until the goal is reached.  In essence, therefore the PA cycle runs successively through the environment, through perceptual cortex, through frontal executive cortex, and back to the environment.

2.  The processing through posterior and frontal cortex will be carried out by neuronal networks (“cognits”) representing memory or knowledge (semantic memory) acquired by prior experience. Thus the actions will be informed, every step of the way, by updating or correcting prior assumptions about the world in a probabilistic—Bayesian—manner. That internal information (knowledge and memory) is hierarchically organized, from sensory and motor cortex at the bottom, for specific sensory and motor representation, to association cortex at the top, for representation and processing of sensory input information in the context of the past experience of the individual. Both large sectors of cortex, perceptual and executive, are structurally and dynamically interconnected.  The same is true for the cortices of both hemispheres.

3.  Most important in the human, where PA cycles are long, is that the frontal—executive—cortex possesses mechanisms that anticipate, and prepare for, actions and percepts.  Before a cycle is completed, these mechanisms pre-adapt the organism for anticipated change.  Thus the prefrontal cortex, which is the “vanguard” of evolution and of individual development (ontogeny), has both predictive and preadaptive properties that are unique to the human.  The human prefrontal cortex is eminently endowed for prediction and preadaptation, thus priming and to some extent “short-cutting” the PA cycle.  That cortex does this in cooperation with other brain structures, by engaging them in several prospective cognitive functions, prominently among them:  planning, attentive set, working memory and decision-making.  All suffer, to one degree or another, from injuries of the dorsal and lateral prefrontal cortex.

            I think this, although heavily abstracted, is plenty for this post.  I hope you will find it helpful.

Cheers, Joaquín

 References:

 JM Fuster - Cortex and Mind: Unifying Cognition. Oxford, 2003.

   JM Fuster and SL Bressler – Past makes future: Role of pFC in prediction.  J. Cognit. Neuroscience, 27: 639-654, 2015.

the answer is simply: yes. ...as long as you're not completely amnesic.

i expect full marks for this answer.

thank you.

but more to what i think your broadest point is, i can't imagine any way (after a "long enough" period of development, i.e. learning about your environment, i.e. moving around and perceiving "a lot") to avoid taking past information into account when one's memory contributes at all to behavior, especially at rudimentary levels (once the qualia of "red" becomes useful for something, it's much more likely to generalize [if the "red" neurons fire when they see red] until it meets counter-evidence against its generalization in a specific instance... don't you think??)

...at which point each individual becomes responsible for their own perspective, becoming aware of cognitive biases and their own role in building our social reality, and the whole world is a better place.  yay!

Dear Brandon,

Of course both are affected by our experience.

Our experience, our history is something that is recorded in our structural memory which is housed in the cerebral cortex. But in turn, this structural memory determines the construction of a operative memory, which is the one that registers our motor responses, that then, with experience, will become habits.

This whole process takes as a starting point in our perception. Perception is a complex process of unconscious nature that allows us to build our history or our experience of life.

This does not mean that it has something to do with the 'unconscious inference' of Helmholtz, which is a theoretical construct that was applied to visual perception, but in reality, has no scientific basis.

We must distinguish level of consciousness of unconscious. The latter is a functional aspect of the cerebral cortex that can not be accessed by consciousness, and is responsible for managing the basic psychic structure that lies in the cerebral cortex; while the level of consciousness is a functional psychic state where they are also involved several brain structures, in addition of cortex, although there is not some psychic structure to represent it, it's just a way to make evident the psychic functional aspects, such as thinking. In this sense, the unconscious activity is not opposed to wakefulness or consciousness state.

For more details see my book Psyche, structure and function, which can be downloaded at RG.

I believe in the perceptual set theory (e.g. http://www.simplypsychology.org/perceptual-set.html). so - the answer is "yes".

Dear Brandon,

If you are interested in the effects of past experience on colour perception you might want to consider our work on the memory colour effect. For example:

http://ipe.sagepub.com/content/2/1/13.refs

We also have a book chapter and a BBS commentary in press that discusses the issue in a broader context. Let me know if you would like the preprints.

Thank you!

Christoph

It does, as Gestalt theory holds. But also the personal goals have a filtering effect, and the self perception.

See Alba & Hutchinson(1987), Journal of Consumer Research, March 411-454. for a related discussion, obviously geared to consumption decisions and judgments.

Past experience establishes schemata and templates for continuing perception of the world, when these schemata fail to provide and instructive fit we resort to analogical reasoning.

Interesting way to pose this question.  Our research provides evidence for #2, but perhaps also #3 in your scheme.  Please see our paper on how past experience of reward drives future eye movement search.  

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/Supplement_2/10438.full.pdf

I think this is an example worth considering for your question because eye movements are typically non-conscious (though of course we can consciously direct them), so it pushes a bit further on what you consider as 'cognition'.  

Well I am a visual artist Brandon and have spent a long time working out what the data structures operational within the phenomenon are (vision is non-photographically rendered), then how they are controlled by 'mind' and then how past experience can impact. I attach a list of presentations but these two are the latest. Dynamical systems appear to be running the phenomenon and its through multi-dimension phasespace that I think we 'manage' experiential awareness. So its through this system that memory impacts? See if it works for you.

Vision-Space: The painter, reality and the real https://youtu.be/gzzBYOs6mc8

Vision-Space: Follow-up: The painter, reality and the real https://youtu.be/JMGhI7hfDhE

Then there is this one:

Vision-Space: The protagonists http://youtu.be/516mjrU3aC0

Dear Brandon,

Thank you for your question, it is a familiar one that needs to be permanently reformulated !

having mainly worked on the evolution of spatial memory through the life span of rats in controled experiments, I can mainly confirm other responses that:

Does past experience affect

1. Our cognition (thoughts, ideas, beliefs, etc.)

2. Our actions (which in turn determine the aspects of the environment we attend)

3. Both our actions and cognition

(a). Independent of each other

(b). Interdependently or cyclically

4. ...something else

3b is the most reasonable answer, since action is linked to cognition (future and past as well) and the time dimension forces to an interdependence. As a physiologist, I must add cyclicity, since all body functions undergo cyclical influence, both "directly"  from distributed circadian clocks and necessarily "indirectly" due to network influences.

HOWEVER,

if I refer to various attempts of H. Von Foerster, H. Atlan, F Varela and many others whom I have vergotten the names, "l'organisation par le bruit" is another way of considering the effect of a so-called darwinian natural selection: the traces of spontaneously produced variations and accidental changes from the past, as well as actual hypotheses as to what might be expected, are filtered by environmental and internal constraints.

I extrapolate as my working hypothesis for a definition of what is life's most specific property : an emergence from the interactions between the inscription of successful adaptation strategies - no living structure being immune to a memory process - and internal (formally defined) and environmental constraints.

I suspect that this is an illustration of the not so paradoxical statement that "memory is for the future", suggesting that memory traces are necessarily influenced by future events, as is illustrated by various definition of (re)consolidation processes. A permanenty remodelled construct.

PS: something else cannot be excluded, provided it is related to 3b!

I apologize for my permanent difficulty to formulate in english what seems so evident in French. Hence my conviction that, to acquire "significance" science requires to be anchored in a language that best represents how a scientific community thinks.

I believe, our past experiences affect both our cognition and our action, again interdependently and cyclically. As a child grows in age, her cognitive development takes place depending to an extent on her experience. The whole process takes place through what Piaget would say, assimilation and accommodation. Let's take an example. The child sees a red  round object and on the basis of her past experience perceives it as an apple. She tries to eat it as her experience tells her that apples can be eaten. If  the object is not a real apple and could not be eaten, the next time she sees that red object, she would not try to eat it due to her last experience and would not perceive it as apple (now her past experience restricts her action which in turn influences her perception). 

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments!

I am struck by the diversity in these answers. If I am not mistaken, each alternative (1-4) has received some support from contributor(s).

Perhaps, it is useful to epitomize the emerging themes to this point.

There are those who favor approaches, in which experience continuously revises the representations used to interpret similar experiences and program appropriate actions. This general approach is associated with 1 or 3.

There are also those who propose as an interplay between cognition and action (in one or another, consistent with 3(b), and in one case 2.

Please correct me if I misrepresent these themes, and I hope to hear still more perspectives!

Brandon

Dear Brandon,

this apparent confusion may be due to the fact that specific scientific evidence is easier for 1 or 2. But I simply cannot imagine that influencing cognition should not affect action, or influencing action would not influence cognition. If you consider simply the Neisser'cycle of exploration, in which what has just been identified changes how the coming movements will be affected, you have an "ancient" reference for this statement.  Then, the double influence cannot be separate... hence the most likely answer being 3b. But this is due to the general significance of "action" and "cognition".

However, if your question is addressed in a specific condition, depending on your setup and experimental procedure, you might perhaps have  effect on cognition (and you do not test all possible actions based on this cognition) or on action (and you do not test for all dimensions of what you consider to be cognition).

Personnally, I am afraid that your perplexity stems from the very broad significance of the concepts of cognition (so many different memory traces!) or action.

Thus more than perspectives, you might face specific conditions in which cognition and action might seem dissociated.

Anyway, thank you for food for thought,

Françoise

Dear Brandon,

            Yours is perhaps the most important question in the neurobiology of behavior.  I have dealt with it extensively in my research and in numerous writings; it is at the very center of the cognitive neuroscience of the cerebral cortex.  Here I will answer it as succinctly and critically as I possibly can, trying not to sound simplistic or sententious.  Almost all your tentative assumptions are basically correct and compatible with one another and with my answer below. Let me attempt to qualify them a bit and to support them with a few brain facts.

            Indeed, Helmholtz was right.  We remember what we perceive, and we perceive—intuitively or unconsciously--what we remember.  This is increasingly apparent to cognitive neuroscientists if we adhere to the empirical facts and put consciousness in its proper place, that is, by accepting that it is not essential to neural mechanisms but an epiphenomenon of them.  Most cognition is totally unconscious.  In any case, my argument here is centered precisely on a conjecture that you almost inconspicuously pose as a question: actions and cognition are interdependent cyclically.

1.  In the course of goal-directed behavior, the neural mechanisms that adapt the organism to its world in pursuit of the goal are cyclic, embedded in what I call the “perception-action (PA) cycle.” This is the biocybernetic cycle--with sensors, effectors, feed-forward and feedback--that from moment to moment adjusts the organism to the environment in pursuit of the goal.  Briefly, in the course of that pursuit, a given sensory stimulus comes through the senses, is analyzed in posterior (perceptual) cortex, and informs a new or corrective action in frontal (executive) cortex; that action will produce sensory changes in the environment, which will inform new or corrective action, and so on and so forth until the goal is reached.  In essence, therefore the PA cycle runs successively through the environment, through perceptual cortex, through frontal executive cortex, and back to the environment.

2.  The processing through posterior and frontal cortex will be carried out by neuronal networks (“cognits”) representing memory or knowledge (semantic memory) acquired by prior experience. Thus the actions will be informed, every step of the way, by updating or correcting prior assumptions about the world in a probabilistic—Bayesian—manner. That internal information (knowledge and memory) is hierarchically organized, from sensory and motor cortex at the bottom, for specific sensory and motor representation, to association cortex at the top, for representation and processing of sensory input information in the context of the past experience of the individual. Both large sectors of cortex, perceptual and executive, are structurally and dynamically interconnected.  The same is true for the cortices of both hemispheres.

3.  Most important in the human, where PA cycles are long, is that the frontal—executive—cortex possesses mechanisms that anticipate, and prepare for, actions and percepts.  Before a cycle is completed, these mechanisms pre-adapt the organism for anticipated change.  Thus the prefrontal cortex, which is the “vanguard” of evolution and of individual development (ontogeny), has both predictive and preadaptive properties that are unique to the human.  The human prefrontal cortex is eminently endowed for prediction and preadaptation, thus priming and to some extent “short-cutting” the PA cycle.  That cortex does this in cooperation with other brain structures, by engaging them in several prospective cognitive functions, prominently among them:  planning, attentive set, working memory and decision-making.  All suffer, to one degree or another, from injuries of the dorsal and lateral prefrontal cortex.

            I think this, although heavily abstracted, is plenty for this post.  I hope you will find it helpful.

Cheers, Joaquín

 References:

 JM Fuster - Cortex and Mind: Unifying Cognition. Oxford, 2003.

   JM Fuster and SL Bressler – Past makes future: Role of pFC in prediction.  J. Cognit. Neuroscience, 27: 639-654, 2015.

Dear Brandon,

The publication attached provides more detail and illustration to my answer.  Joaquin

Sorry, the publication ("Past makes future") is already in my RG archive.  Joaquin

Dear Professor Fuster

I read your answer to the Brandon's question and I found it very helpful.

Thank you

Shamseddin

 Dear Shamseddin,

Many thanks for your comment.  I am happy that you found my answer helpful (if you have not done it yet, please upvote it).  Cheers, Joaquín Fuster

Concerning motor experience...yes, it does! ;)

  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291166890_Martins_I_C_Oliveira_A_M_Steenbergen_B_2013_Motion_extrapolation_in_people_with_motor_constraints_suggestive_evidence_for_embodiment_Proceedings_of_the_29th_Annual_Meeting_of_the_International_Society

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291345736_Martins_I_C_Steenbergen_B_Oliveira_AM_2012_Motor_imagery_in_cerebral_palsy_Is_that_true_Special_Education_and_rehabilitation_Novi_Sad_-_Servia_22th_October_Book_of_Proceedings_and_Summaries_of_II_Inte

Article Martins, I. C., Oliveira, A. M. & Steenbergen, B. (2013). Mo...

Conference Paper Martins, I. C.; Steenbergen, B. & Oliveira, A.M. (2012). Mot...

Dear Brandon Thomas, if you see this issue in a learning point of view, you possibly say that the past experiences will affect directly in the present actions and perceptions, because the memory is significant to help us in decision making process. If you see the BDI (Belief - Desire - Intention) model and apply it to the machine learning process, your model will not only save data regarding facts collected from an environment, but it will also applies a sequence of "rules", that can be called as "beliefs", that in turn will affect directly the system behavior as a hole. If you want to know more about it in the sensor networks field, you can read my papers about decision making process in WSN. 

This was very helpful, thank you Jaoquin! Upvoted and following!