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Have we cracked the brain's "programming language" yet? I am affraid that until now research has been focused on the biological side of it; and it makes more se

by tremols 13y ago

Have we cracked the brain's "programming language" yet? I am affraid that until now research has been focused on the biological side of it; and it makes more sense to me to replicate the logic instead of replicating the brain's biological structure. I believe that dataflow/reactive programming is the answer and the direction to follow as its principles are pretty close to how neurons work; plus it can be made to work on top of von neuman architectures.

quomopete 13y ago
the brain having a programming language would have to be based on a lot of assumptions that not everyone is willing to make.
- Vardhan 13y ago
  I don't think he meant that in the literal sense, hence the quotes. The brain's "programming language" refers more the to the idea of what makes the brain's biological structure work to produce human perception.
  - quomopete 13y ago
    I realize that, I made my comment towards this being a metaphor and I still stand by it.
- tremols 13y ago
  Its true, but there are even fields of science based almost entirely on assumptions. Even then, there is a neuroscience branch called neural coding that apparently acknowledges the existence of a neural code; but judging from the wikipedia entry their approach seems still too "low level".
z3phyr 13y ago
This comes under the category of neuromorphic engineering. It is an excellent question, of which I am trying to find an answer for months now! I bet there is more, just buried under varied publications, and I am sure that they created a DSL for their specialized brain based chip. The most obvious and battle tested way to program a NeuroSynaptic hardware is to create models of the brain (any application) in an algorithm and burning it with an HDL into an fpga or an fpaa. For computation of numerical entities, a small controller running a customized embedded software is used.
- tremols 13y ago
  Interesting, I gave up on a few google searches. But your comment seems to confirm the obscurity of such studies.
jbooth 13y ago
By replicating the biological structure, they might shed some light on the logic. Right now we're making almost zero traction, a serious effort to copy it might at least make it clear what we're trying to understand. At the very least, if they have a cortex in software, it would create a ethical (?) way to experiment with the logic by enabling/disabling pieces and seeing what happens.
- tremols 13y ago
  "By replicating the biological structure, they might shed some light on the logic.." Sounds a bit like cargo-cult to me. We already tried to spawn amoebas from electro-charged soup of chemicals and it didn't work.

by tremols 13y ago

quomopete 13y ago

the brain having a programming language would have to be based on a lot of assumptions that not everyone is willing to make.

Vardhan 13y ago
I don't think he meant that in the literal sense, hence the quotes. The brain's "programming language" refers more the to the idea of what makes the brain's biological structure work to produce human perception.
- quomopete 13y ago
  I realize that, I made my comment towards this being a metaphor and I still stand by it.
tremols 13y ago
Its true, but there are even fields of science based almost entirely on assumptions. Even then, there is a neuroscience branch called neural coding that apparently acknowledges the existence of a neural code; but judging from the wikipedia entry their approach seems still too "low level".

z3phyr 13y ago

This comes under the category of neuromorphic engineering. It is an excellent question, of which I am trying to find an answer for months now! I bet there is more, just buried under varied publications, and I am sure that they created a DSL for their specialized brain based chip. The most obvious and battle tested way to program a NeuroSynaptic hardware is to create models of the brain (any application) in an algorithm and burning it with an HDL into an fpga or an fpaa. For computation of numerical entities, a small controller running a customized embedded software is used.

tremols 13y ago
Interesting, I gave up on a few google searches. But your comment seems to confirm the obscurity of such studies.

jbooth 13y ago

By replicating the biological structure, they might shed some light on the logic. Right now we're making almost zero traction, a serious effort to copy it might at least make it clear what we're trying to understand. At the very least, if they have a cortex in software, it would create a ethical (?) way to experiment with the logic by enabling/disabling pieces and seeing what happens.

tremols 13y ago
"By replicating the biological structure, they might shed some light on the logic.." Sounds a bit like cargo-cult to me. We already tried to spawn amoebas from electro-charged soup of chemicals and it didn't work.