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- From: arms@cs.UAlberta.CA (Bill Armstrong)
- Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
- Subject: Re: Thanks Neural Nets, and Brains?
- Message-ID: <arms.711907358@spedden>
- Date: 23 Jul 92 16:02:38 GMT
- References: <1992Jul21.162033.57397@cc.usu.edu> <1992Jul23.013755.18847@hubcap.clemson.edu>
- Sender: news@cs.UAlberta.CA (News Administrator)
- Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
- Lines: 32
- Nntp-Posting-Host: spedden.cs.ualberta.ca
-
- bdbryan@eng.clemson.edu (Ben Bryant) writes:
-
- >In article 57397@cc.usu.edu, sl859@cc.usu.edu () writes:
-
- >> I do have an additional question. How extensive has the research
- >>been on neurons of a neural net and the actual neurons of the brain? I
- >>am interested mostly out of curiosity, but from what I've read I can only
- >>deduct that we still haven't got a very good model of the actual workings
- >>of the brain neurons, let alone how to model them with computers.
-
- > ... one scientist (I can't remember his name) said that he would
- > one day like to be able to follow the path of firing responses through
- >the brain using some MAJOR HEAVY DUTY processing and some HYPER-SENSITIVE
- >electrical sensors. -I believe when that time comes, this the field of
- >artificial life (Data from Star Trek?) will appear. That was an article in
- >one of the spring `92 issues of PS.
-
- First off, isn't it rather strange that the most widespread artificial
- model of neural operation. the multilayer perceptron, uses continuous
- quantities on its connections, while the dendrites and axons of
- neurons use "zero or one" type action potentials? Until physiological
- psychologists start studying adaptive logic networks, can anyone
- expect much progress on understanding the brain?
-
- What use the the MAJOR HEAVY DUTY processing if there is no model to
- help understand the operations? Imagine trying to understand an
- operating system by looking at the flows of bits in a computer system.
- --
- ***************************************************
- Prof. William W. Armstrong, Computing Science Dept.
- University of Alberta; Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H1
- arms@cs.ualberta.ca Tel(403)492 2374 FAX 492 1071
-