5 ms·

Neuron is the hardware. We have no idea how the software on it works. The way we model neural networks might be a very different from the operating system of th

Neuron is the hardware. We have no idea how the software on it works. The way we model neural networks might be a very different from the operating system of the brain. It's like saying we mapped the x86 chip so we should be able to to simulate all it can do without reverse engineering the software.

russdill 8y ago
That's a huge oversimplification. There isn't some hard drive from where software is loaded onto neurons. A closer model would be saying that the software is the neuron's interconnections and it's activation weights. The neurons are both the hardware and the software.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nyrulez 8y ago
  How would you be so confident that neuron is both the software and the hardware? Do we actually understand how we have cognition ? There is tremendous amount of electrical activity in the brain (and the entire nervous system). One could argue it's a low dimensional signal like an activor or a much higher abstraction like the software we run on our chips. Just because we use neural network like structures to generate activation weights, how does it follow that's how the brain works?
  - neuromantik8086 8y ago
    From a former neuro person: The physical world is not an abstraction- it's material. If you talk to anyone with any reasonable level of knowledge about neuroscience, you aren't going to find anyone who finds the Cartesian dualism you're effectively proposing credible anymore. The only real philosophies that hold their own in the psych/neuro world are reductionism/materialism and biological naturalism. That and lesion studies / patients like H.M. have pretty effectively demonstrated that neurons have both processing and storage functions that aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
    - neuromantik8086 8y ago
      It's also worth pointing out that there are multiple types of neurons, so I suppose that you could argue that some of them are more "software-like" while others are more "hardware-like", as well as glial cells that essentially serve as dumb cabling (huge oversimplification). Purkinje cells in the cerebellum, for instance, are known to be more involved in muscle memory, although they still exhibit properties that are both hardware/software-like.
  - cdelsolar 8y ago
    what is an activor?
- candiodari 8y ago
  We don't know that. For instance, there is a "chemical clock" that teaches the hard to beat in feutuses (and it does some other stuff too). There is much behavior training in other parts as well, for instance to make you breathe there is a reflex. I think it's a pretty safe assumption to make that we only know the big honking in-your-face examples of genetic behavior. * So while there is no hard drive with data it does "load data on the networks" in the sense that it puts them into train mode and trains a specific set of actions. Secondly, from ~16 days after conception the brain (at that point a human embryo is something close to a fish) the brain is trying to learn. At that point, all it can perceive is the mother. So it learns ~8.5 months from the mother before drawing it's first breath. That's also "loading from the harddrive", just with more efficiency. * one revealing experience I've had is owning an animal and then going to a dog show. The character of dogs of the same breed, even ones that have never seen eachother, ever, in uncannily similar. For horses and cats, I hear it's even worse. I've heard claims that some horse trainers know the exact family relations of a group of horses after observing them for 10 minutes just by seeing behavior differences. But the cats and dogs examples are pretty strong, since those are matching character traits in animals that don't share any close family bond, just the breed, and have never seen eachother. Their mothers and fathers have never seen eachother. And still, they react to strangers exactly the same way, down to whether their head is tilted left or right, how long they look, and many such small things.

russdill 8y ago

That's a huge oversimplification. There isn't some hard drive from where software is loaded onto neurons. A closer model would be saying that the software is the neuron's interconnections and it's activation weights. The neurons are both the hardware and the software.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nyrulez 8y ago
How would you be so confident that neuron is both the software and the hardware? Do we actually understand how we have cognition ? There is tremendous amount of electrical activity in the brain (and the entire nervous system). One could argue it's a low dimensional signal like an activor or a much higher abstraction like the software we run on our chips. Just because we use neural network like structures to generate activation weights, how does it follow that's how the brain works?
- neuromantik8086 8y ago
  From a former neuro person: The physical world is not an abstraction- it's material. If you talk to anyone with any reasonable level of knowledge about neuroscience, you aren't going to find anyone who finds the Cartesian dualism you're effectively proposing credible anymore. The only real philosophies that hold their own in the psych/neuro world are reductionism/materialism and biological naturalism. That and lesion studies / patients like H.M. have pretty effectively demonstrated that neurons have both processing and storage functions that aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
  - neuromantik8086 8y ago
    It's also worth pointing out that there are multiple types of neurons, so I suppose that you could argue that some of them are more "software-like" while others are more "hardware-like", as well as glial cells that essentially serve as dumb cabling (huge oversimplification). Purkinje cells in the cerebellum, for instance, are known to be more involved in muscle memory, although they still exhibit properties that are both hardware/software-like.
- cdelsolar 8y ago
  what is an activor?
candiodari 8y ago
We don't know that. For instance, there is a "chemical clock" that teaches the hard to beat in feutuses (and it does some other stuff too). There is much behavior training in other parts as well, for instance to make you breathe there is a reflex. I think it's a pretty safe assumption to make that we only know the big honking in-your-face examples of genetic behavior. * So while there is no hard drive with data it does "load data on the networks" in the sense that it puts them into train mode and trains a specific set of actions. Secondly, from ~16 days after conception the brain (at that point a human embryo is something close to a fish) the brain is trying to learn. At that point, all it can perceive is the mother. So it learns ~8.5 months from the mother before drawing it's first breath. That's also "loading from the harddrive", just with more efficiency. * one revealing experience I've had is owning an animal and then going to a dog show. The character of dogs of the same breed, even ones that have never seen eachother, ever, in uncannily similar. For horses and cats, I hear it's even worse. I've heard claims that some horse trainers know the exact family relations of a group of horses after observing them for 10 minutes just by seeing behavior differences. But the cats and dogs examples are pretty strong, since those are matching character traits in animals that don't share any close family bond, just the breed, and have never seen eachother. Their mothers and fathers have never seen eachother. And still, they react to strangers exactly the same way, down to whether their head is tilted left or right, how long they look, and many such small things.