There’s now a book review tool on this site. To create a book review, login and use one of the following methods: Hover your cursor over the word New a the top of the page (after logging in) and, from the drop-down menu, select Book Review. Create your book review and save it as you would a usual post. In the left column of links, hover your cursor over the Book Reviews link and, from the pop-out menu, select New. Create…
By Dehaene et al., Science 358, 486–492 (2017). The abstract: “The controversial question of whether machines may ever be conscious must be based on a careful consideration of how consciousness arises in the only physical system that undoubtedly possesses it: the human brain. We suggest that the word “consciousness” conflates two different types of information-processing computations in the brain: the selection of information for global broadcasting, thus making it flexibly available for computation and report (C1, consciousness in the first…
Book title by Stanislas Dehaene (New York: Viking 2014), a copy of which can be downloaded here. (Note it is in EPUB format. EPUB readers can be downloaded free on the internet.) From the Introduction, the section “Cracking consciousness”: “The word consciousness, as we use it in everyday speech, is loaded with fuzzy meanings, covering a broad range of complex phenomena. Our first task, then, will be to bring order to this confused state of affairs. We will have to…
Neural learning occurs at dendrite roots, not in synapses. The newly suggested learning scenario indicates that learning occurs in a few dendrites that are in much closer proximity to the neuron, as opposed to the previous notion. … The new learning scenario occurs in different sites of the brain and therefore calls for a reevaluation of current treatments for disordered brain functionality. … In addition, the learning mechanism is at the basis of recent advanced machine learning and deep learning…
“This is the first time scientists have been able to identify a patient’s own brain cell code or pattern for memory and, in essence, ‘write in’ that code to make existing memory work better, an important first step in potentially restoring memory loss” … “We showed that we could tap into a patient’s own memory content, reinforce it and feed it back to the patient,” Hampson said. “Even when a person’s memory is impaired, it is possible to identify the…
A member of one of my online writing communities posted this interesting personal article on his recovery following a serious concussion. This quick read illustrates the subjective experience of being aware your brain is malfunctioning and witnessing recovery from the inside.
Thanks to Normalanga for sending this study to me, in which participants were paid to read opposing political Twitter feeds for a month. The results were that conservatives were “substantially more conservative” after the experiment, while liberals were “slightly more liberal […] though none of these effects were statistically significant.” It is obvious that liberal and conservative bias is on an asymmetrical scale.
An improvement to the Neural Simulation Tool (NEST) algorithm, the primary tool of the Human Brain Project, expanded the scope of brain neural data management (for simulations) from the current 1% of discrete neurons (about the number in the cerebellum) to 10%. The NEST algorithm can scale to store 100% of BCI-derived or simulated neural data within near-term reach as supercomputing capacity increases. The algorithm achieves its massive efficiency boost by eliminating the need to explicitly store as much data…
Given the human brain’s approximately 80 billion neurons, it would take tens of thousands of these devices to record a substantial volume of neuron-level activities. Still, this is a remarkable achievement. The system would simultaneously acquire data from more than 1 million neurons in real time. It would convert the spike data (using bit encoding) and send it via an effective communication format for processing and storage on conventional computer systems. It would also provide feedback to a subject in…
From the introduction to Chapter 9 of his new book The Strange Order of Things. “The term ‘consciousness’ applies to the very natural but distinctive kind of mental state described by the above [subjective] traits. The mental state allows its owner to be the private experiencer of the world around and, just as important, to experience aspects of his or her own being. For practical purposes, the universe of knowledge, current and past, that can be conjured up in a…