How Brains Are Built

Principles of Computational Neuroscience

Comments

Phenomenal content
Arnold Trehub

2/20/2011 10:23:16 AM

 Brain is a complex biological mechanism, and while its functions can be DESCRIBED in computational terms, its efficacy resides in its biological machinery. With all the advances in the scale, complexity, and performance of computers and robotic devices, I have yet to see an artifact that exhibits a coherent global analog of a volumetric space organized around a fixed perspectival locus of origin. This kind of internal representation is essential in order to have a brain that can be said to have phenomenal content. For a more detailed discussion of this topic see here: http://people.umass.edu/trehub/YCCOG828%20copy.pdf

Computer Neuroscience and the Potential for Plasticity
Beth P. Laster MS CRC

2/1/2011 11:10:29 AM

 I wonder how what we know about Brain Plasticity could be applied to this exciting field of Computational Neuroscience! Can't wait to read more about it as this field continues to unfold!

Alternative perspectives?
LEON THURMAN, Ed.D.

2/1/2011 11:08:43 AM

For at least 50 years, Nobel Laureate and neuroscientist GERALD M. EDELMAN has been continually researching and theorizing about: (1) the structure and function (internal and external) of "embrained" (my word) mammalian organisms (includes human beings) (2) how such organisms adapt/change/learn as a result of interactions with perceived environments (3) how physical biological processes produce the phenomenon we refer to as "consciousness," e.g., sensory awareness, thought, experiential qualia, learning, and other neuropsychobiological processings.

His findings and perspectives regarding the neuroscience of brains, as I understand them, do not include "computational anything" due to the essentially unimaginable complexity** of neural "states," yet his work is abundantly seminal in understanding them. His work is not referenced at all in the "computational neuroscience" article about which we are commenting. Among his 21st century books is WIDER THAN THE SKY: THE PHENOMENAL GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Yale University Press, 2004.

**Estimates of brain complexity: 100B NEURONS 900B GLIAL CELLS 1,000 TRILLION SYNAPSES [would take 32M years to count them, assuming one per second] Number of POSSIBLE NEURAL NETWORKS: 10 followed by at least one million zeros [In the known universe, estimated to be 10 followed by 79 zeros of positively charged particles; Edelman & Tononi, 2000, A Universe of Consciousness, Basic Books, p.38] Will computational neuroscience be able to fully explain what happens inside us when the expressive arts are created and responded to?

cause and effect
isa kocher

1/31/2011 1:07:17 PM

 in physics it has been a century since any meaningful sense of cause and effect has existed. planck in philosophy of physics explains why. einstein never agreed. but the fact remains physics astrophysics cosmology nuclear physics quantum mechanics linguistics and biology are based on statistical measurement of probabilities NOT perfected mechanical models of reality.in fact a most current physics does not even refer to experimental data but mathematical speculation. AT LEAST the linguists actually listens to living people talk and biologists cut up animals with all their blood and guts. in the year 2011 to set off 18th century science as the standard sets us all back. if i hit a golf ball through a window right off the fairway: what pay tell is the "cause" and what is the "effect". next we'll be counting ultimate causes and doing experiments on ethers that carry light and energy waves.