
'Brain' In A Dish Acts As Autopilot, Living Computer (2004) - austenallred
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041022104658.htm
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joe_the_user
Well, the story is ten years old but scanning Google, I think the scientist
who did this is still at it. Still, it may have gone as far as its going by
itself.

However, one thing that occurs to me is that one of the main arguments against
full brain simulation is that a brain too many parts that are too complex. It
seems to be that a construct like this might be much simpler and so might be
something that the European Brain Project and similar efforts might target to
understand braincell computation.

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wuliwong
In the lab I worked in, we literally studied two neurons coupled together.
Simplistic networks are good for learning certain things in isolation but some
phenomena might only be the result of complex systems and studying small
networks may never lead us towards understanding these complex phenomena. The
obvious one is "consciousness" but even things like sensory perception which
in part is the result of complex, distributed calculations would difficult if
not impossible to understand from studying simple networks.

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rdlecler1
Harnessing the principles of neurogenisis may be the only scaleable way to
build large comples ANNs. If so, it will be interesting to see what role
evolutionary development (evolved genes encoding the developmental process).

