Modeling the Brain’s Operating System

To make progess in understanding human brain functionality, we
will need to understand its basic functions at an abstract level.
One way of accomplishing such an integration is to
create a model of a human that has a useful amount of
complexity. Essentially, one is faced with proposing an embodied
“operating system” model that can be tested against human
performance. Recently technological advances have been made that
allow progress to be made in this direction. Graphics models that
simulate extensive human capabilities can be used as platforms from
which to develop synthetic models of visuo-motor behavior.
Currently such models can capture only a small portion of a full
behavioral repertoire, but for the behaviors that they do model,
they can describe complete visuo-motor subsystems at a level of
detail that can be tested against human performance in realistic
environments. We outline one such model and show both
that it can produce interesting new hypotheses as to the role of
vision and also that it can enhance our understanding of visual
attention.