
Brain's wiring: More like the Internet than a pyramid? - desigooner
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100809161234.htm
======
todayiamme
I think that this view has been around longer than 2003. Steven Pinker
describes how integrated as well as parallel thought is in his book The Blank
Slate, which came out in 2002 (see:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate>). Assuming that he took 2-4
years writing it. He must have been working on it in the 1990s.

This is an important thing as it isn't an assumption anymore. This idea of a
complex and rich network of networks is now starting to be _seen_ in computer
simulations of actual neural networks. The best bit is that people can do
deeper experimentation based upon those two facets like the blue brain
project.

Although, a lot of questions remain unanswered. A good starting part, I think,
would be to see how information itself is transferred and stored at the
'nodes' of the network. For example, recently Dr. Thomas Sudhof (see:
[http://neuroscience.stanford.edu/research/laboratories/Sudho...](http://neuroscience.stanford.edu/research/laboratories/SudhofLab.html))
from Stanford won a prize because he decoded the protein that causes synaptic
exchange to happen (see:
<http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2010/june/sudhof-0603.html>). That's just one
piece, but it's a crucial piece.

What I love about the current state of neuro-science is that it's like a
scattered jigsaw puzzle waiting to be put together. Almost every month / week
(?) some small, but crucial piece is found and it gets added to the box. It's
simply beautiful.

Another really interesting thing is that everything that's usually here on HN
from map reduce to manipulating huge amounts of data is laying the foundation
for creating tools that tackle this problem. It's like everybody is
inadvertently working to complete the jigsaw without realizing it, which is
really, really mind blowing.

~~~
tocomment
When do you think we'll have a very basic understanding of how the brain
works? E.g, How are memories stored, how does pattern recognition happen, how
does generalization work?

~~~
todayiamme
Um, I have no clue as I am pretty uneducated. I don't know anything beyond
what I read in light books. So, I doubt if I am qualified at all to say
anything unsubstantiated in _any_ field.

On the other hand, I also doubt if anyone actually does have a clue about the
when.

~~~
todayiamme
@tocomment

I really can't. I don't even have a day of college education, and I wasn't
exactly a stellar student in HS either. So, it's quite likely that you know
10^10^10^10 times more than me.

Also, I am really not as smart as I sound. In fact, I am the most boring and
dumbest# person you could possibly ever meet.

#Hence proven.

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davi
This touches on my area of research. The 'pyramid' idea of brain function is
essentially a straw man to jazz up the Science Daily article. It's been known
for a long time (a century) that recurrent loops occur throughout the brain.
The mystery is what these loops do, given the apparent hierarchical buildups
of representation that seem to occur in sensory systems, particularly the
visual system. (Also in the hippocampus, e.g. place cells, and other areas in
all likelihood.)

I haven't read the paper thoroughly
(<http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/07/28/1009112107>), but looks like
the authors are using a strategy of systematic and tightly circumscribed
injections of anterograde & retrograde tracers to map out, with unusually high
precision, the inter-areal projections for a particular circuit they're
interested in. This mapping of inter-areal connectivity is a little different
from what I'm interested in, which is to understand how the many-to-many
anatomical wiring diagram between _individual neurons_ in a neuronal network
relates to the transformation of information carried out by that network. In
other words, they are mapping connections between areas, but I think it's
likely that an additional level of resolution -- the mapping of connections at
the level of individual neurons -- will likely be necessary (and probably
insufficient) to crack brain circuits.

~~~
neurotech1
The synaptic brain works in cycles, which can be measured with EEG sensors. If
the brain is asleep or damaged, the cycles are much slower.

BTW Can't they already map out connections using fMRI or dtMRI?

~~~
davi
No. These synapses:
<http://synapses.clm.utexas.edu/anatomy/chemical/asymh.htm>

EEG sensors measure large aggregates of activity.

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Dn_Ab
I doubt its much like either, although a distributed network might be our
current best but still poor guess. At any given time period people are always
comparing the brain to their most salient piece of current technology. While
at each step more of the brain's essence is arguably captured, the metaphors
still leave _alot_ to be desired - glossing over gigantic swathes of
functionality.

The brain has been compared to spirits, hydraulics, clockwork systems,
computers and now the internet. I think it takes hubris to not expect people
in the future to think our current theories of the brain to be as quaint as
how we now view ideas of the brain as a mechanical system.

~~~
saint-loup
>>> At any given time period people are always comparing the brain to their
most salient piece of current technology.

Exactly. Guess what ?

[http://scientopia.org/blogs/childsplay/2010/08/a-thinking-
ma...](http://scientopia.org/blogs/childsplay/2010/08/a-thinking-machine-on-
metaphors-for-mind/)

------
metamemetics
> _Neuroscientists are split between a traditional view that the brain is
> organized as a hierarchy, with most regions feeding into the "higher"
> centers of conscious thought, and a more recent model of the brain as a flat
> network similar to the Internet._

"Higher" centers of consciousness seems to be a predictable bias given our
view of humans in relation to the outside world.

What are these ambiguously "higher" centers of conciousness that are most
advanced in humans? I think it is succinctly described as the following:
analogical reasoning. The capacity for not just associating relations between
things, but the capacity for relating relationships.

What makes humans unique is our massive capacity for analogical reasoning.
Humans have by far the highest capacity for analogical reasoning in the animal
kingdom, with bottle-nose dolphins coming in a more distant second and great
apes third.

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tokenadult
Doesn't this idea go back at least to Marvin Minsky's _Society of Mind?_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind>

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devijvers
My thoughts instantly go to Deleuze & Guattari's rhizome Idea in A Thousand
Plateaus. Why wouldn't our brain run small connected pieces of software that
together emulate how the world works and especially how other people are
expected to act/behave. This way the network of networks can run simulations.
Also, when new bits of information arrive - see Dawkins' communication-is-
influence idea - the software gets updated.

~~~
saint-loup
The paper is so broad and vague that it can remind you of many, many ideas and
authors.

And, I must add, the concept of rhizome is so broad and vague that many, many
things can be called a "rhizome".

------
peng
Neural networks anyone?

