Mila and IVADO researchers present a new neurocomputational model of the human brain that might bridge the gap in understanding AI and the biological mechanisms underlying mental disorders. A new study presents a new neurocomputational model of the human brain, which might shed light on how the brain develops complex cognitive skills and advance neural artificial intelligence research. An international team of scientists from the Institut Pasteur and Sorbonne University in Paris, the CHU Sainte-Justine, Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, and the University of Montreal conducted the study. The model's emphasis on the interaction between two fundamental types of learning--Hebbian learning, associated with statistical regularity (i.e., repetition), or as neuropsychologist Donald Hebb has put it, "neurons that fire together, wire together"--and reinforcement learning, associated with reward and the dopamine neurotransmitter, provides insights into the fundamental mechanisms underlying cognition. The model solves three tasks of increasing complexity across those levels, from visual recognition to cognitive manipulation of conscious percepts.