title: Marr's Levels Revisited: Understanding How Brains Break.
abstract: While the research programs in early cognitive science and artificial intelligence aimed to articulate what cognition was in ideal terms, much research in contemporary computational neuroscience looks at how and why brains fail to function as they should ideally. This focus on impairment affects how we understand David Marr's hypothesized three levels of understanding. In this essay, we suggest some refinements to Marr's distinctions using a population activity model of cortico-striatal circuitry exploring impulsivity and behavioral inhibition as a case study. In particular, we urge that Marr's computational level should be redefined to include a description of how systems break down. We also underscore that feed-forward processing, cognition disconnected from behavioral context, and representations do not always drive cognition in the way that Marr originally assumed.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Philosophy, Psychology, and Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience, Weaver Institute for Law and Psychiatry, University of Cincinnati.
authors.forename: Valerie G
authors.initials: VG
authors.lastname: Hardcastle
authors.forename: Kiah
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hardcastle
mesh_terms: D001479:Basal Ganglia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008959:Models, Neurological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Basal ganglia; Computational modeling; Computational neuroscience; David Marr; Explanation; Stop signal reaction time task