Heck! I Think
While I was cogitating about this issue sitting at the corner of the class room listening to the brainies bragging about their report cards, I felt low, I felt sad. Had I known that there were few people around the world slogging nights, trudging between labs trying to find a neural theory of everything, I probably would have solaced myself, giving the braggerts the finger.
I came across this article in a Science magazine and would like to share with you all. The 1.4 Kg organ, called 'the Brain', is such a jigsaw puzzle that bringing the pieces of research works together is still a pending paradoxical claim.
The brain is much messier than a physical system. It is the product of half a billion years of evolution. It performs myriad functions – reasoning, memory, perception, learning, attention and emotion to name just a few – and uses a staggering number of different types of cells, connections and receptors. So it does not lend itself to being easily described by simple mathematical laws.
I came across this article in a Science magazine and would like to share with you all. The 1.4 Kg organ, called 'the Brain', is such a jigsaw puzzle that bringing the pieces of research works together is still a pending paradoxical claim.
The brain is much messier than a physical system. It is the product of half a billion years of evolution. It performs myriad functions – reasoning, memory, perception, learning, attention and emotion to name just a few – and uses a staggering number of different types of cells, connections and receptors. So it does not lend itself to being easily described by simple mathematical laws.
Dad! Am I Analog?
A computer, in the broadest sense, is a device for storing and processing information. In an ordinary digital computer, information is represented by electronic circuits that have two stable states, often denoted 0 and 1.
In a brain, information is represented both dynamically, by trains of action potentials in neurons, and statically, by the strengths of synaptic connections between neurons In a digital computer, information is processed by a small set of "registers" that operate at speeds of billions of cycles per second. In a brain, information is processed by billions of neurons all operating simultaneously, but only at speeds around 100 cycles per second. Thus, brains and digital computers are similar in that both are devices for processing information, but the ways that they do it are very different.
Computational neuroscience encompasses two approaches: first, the use of computers to study the brain; second, the study of how brains perform computation.On one hand, it is possible to write a computer program to simulate the operation of a group of neurons by making use of systems of equations that describe their electrochemical activity; such simulations are known as biologically realistic neural networks. On the other hand, it is possible to study algorithms for neural computation by simulating, or mathematically analyzing, the operations of simplified "units" that have some of the properties of neurons but abstract out much of their biological complexity.
Most programs for digital computers rely on long sequences of operations executed in a specific order, and therefore could not be "ported" into a brain without becoming extremely slow. Computer scientists, however, have found that some types of problems lend themselves naturally to algorithms that can efficiently be executed by brain-like networks of processing elements. One important problem that falls into this group is object recognition: on a digital computer, the seemingly simple task of recognizing a face in a photo turns out to be tremendously difficult, and even the best current programs don't do it well; the human brain, however, reliably solves this problem in a fraction of a second. The process feels almost effortless, but this is only because our brains are heavily optimized for it.
Other tasks that are computationally a great deal simpler, such as adding pairs of hundred-digit numbers, feel more difficult because the human brain is not adapted to execute them efficiently. The computational functions of brain are studied both by neuroscientists and computer scientists. There have been several attempts to build electronic computers that operate on brainlike principles, including a supercomputer called the Connection Machine, but to date none of them has achieved notable success.
brains have several advantages are difficult to duplicate in an electronic including microscopic size processing dimensional arrangement of and the fact that each neuron generates its own power
Uff.... I believe programming a dog is far easier and sensible than programming a nuke scientist planning to pulverize the planet. I hope you enjoyed the article.
Uff.... I believe programming a dog is far easier and sensible than programming a nuke scientist planning to pulverize the planet. I hope you enjoyed the article.
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