---
title: "Resource Constraints on Computation and Communication in the Brain"
authors:
  - "Sashank Varma"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2007/97"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2007/0097.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2007
pages: "611-615"
track: ""
keywords:
---

# Resource Constraints on Computation and Communication in the Brain

Sashank Varma

*Proceedings of the Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 611-615.

## Abstract

This paper contributes to the emerging literature at the border between AI and cognitive neuroscience, analyzing the resource constraints that shape brain function. The brain is conceptualized as a set of ar-eas that collaborate to perform complex cognitive tasks. Both (1) computation within individual areas and (2) communication between collaborating ar-eas are viewed as resource-consuming activities. The efficient deployment of limited resources is formalized as a Linear Programming problem which the brain is hypothesized to solve on a mo-ment-by-moment basis. A model of language proc-essing is analyzed within this framework and found to exhibit resource utilization profiles consistent with those observed in functional neuroimaging studies of humans.