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05 Sep Brain Form and Function

Brain Cross Section Showing the Temporal Lobe

Functional Morphology I’ve addressed questions related to modeling form, function and process in an earlier post. Today’s post drills down in some specific areas to point out some important connections between form and function that could contribute to engineering systems that more accurately model the human brain. Paul Churchland suggests that many AI initiatives have […]

31 Aug Building a Cathedral of Knowledge

Buttresses

Good fiction, especially good historical fiction, gets my brain spinning. Ken Follett‘s The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End describe the technology, born in the “Dark Ages” in which mortal men were able, with limited technologies, to build edifices that could stand throughout the ages. At the same time as Mr. Follett’s mythical cathedral […]

23 Aug Specialized Instruments – Brain Areas

Brodmann map

Finding Functions on a Map Much of what we know about the functions of areas of the brain was discovered by Korbinian Brodmann in the early 1900s. He mapped the brain by sticking in many electrodes, eliciting cognitive responses such as making a sound or showing an image to trigger perception, and monitoring electrical activity. Now, […]

18 Aug Neuromorphic Computing

Inside a Neuron

To Mimic is Human When is imitation not flattering or sincere? I try to be sincere in my blogging, and I have tried not to unnecessarily emphasize the computing ability of the human brain, but the whole point of this blog is to imitate it using computers. A neuromorphic (resembling the brain and/or neurons) computing  model […]

05 Jul Motor Center Structure and Function

Cerebellum Layers

The past few posts in this section have focused on the Cerebrum where thought seems to be centered: we may compare this to a computer. The Cerebellum is where signals for the muscles’ motor control originate: we may compare this to a robot. My point in looking at this is to reinforce the heterogeneity perspective (i.e. […]

21 Jun The Coming Revolution

Revolution

Another Revolution in  Computing – Knowledge Processing Where cognition and computation converge…the brink of the coming revolution? As James Bailey puts it, “The reason today’s electronic computers seem benign is that the true electronic revolution has not happened yet.” Bailey compares our current phase of computerization to the stage of history “when muscle tasks were […]

13 Jun The Mind and its Brain

Eye Perception

Mind-Brain Dualism While brains can be weighed, minds are weightless. Despite some differences of opinion about what all to put on the scale, we can get usable numbers about brain weight and changes in brain weight due to certain phenomena such as changes in age. Of course, the mind and brain may be one and the same – there […]