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- Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
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- From: arms@cs.UAlberta.CA (Bill Armstrong)
- Subject: Re: Neural Nets and Brains
- Message-ID: <arms.712073050@spedden>
- Sender: news@cs.UAlberta.CA (News Administrator)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: spedden.cs.ualberta.ca
- Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
- References: <arms.711935064@spedden>> <BILL.92Jul23224539@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu> <arms.711986585@spedden> <1992Jul25.031126.1722@news.iastate.edu>
- Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 14:04:10 GMT
- Lines: 43
-
- honavar@iastate.edu (Vasant G Honavar) writes:
-
- >In article <arms.711986585@spedden> arms@cs.UAlberta.CA (Bill Armstrong) writes:
- >>
- >>My point
- >>was that BP nets use continuous signals and the brain doesn't -- an
- >>obvious very significant difference. I was asking why people would
- >>expect to understand the brain by studying a system (BP) that is
- >>*different* at the most basic level of signalling.
- >>
- >>Don't you agree that if the brain works on 0-1 signals, then to study
- >>the brain one could beneficially look at logical systems?
-
-
- >But I would like to point out that it is far from clear that the brain
- >works entirely on 0-1 signals.
-
- I didn't mean entirely. Obviously, there are packets of
- neurotransmitter being released that could have a more continous and
- cumulative effect. Not only that, but the synapse possibly acts as a
- contiunously-variable delay unit too.
-
- I shall try to chase down what I have heard about action potentials
- not only on axons but on dendrites. Since I don't study the brain or
- neurons, I have to depend on what others say.
-
- Aside from brain modelling using purely boolean signals, there are
- other potential uses of ALNs un studying the brain; namely explaining
- what is happening in nerve cell collections. If the axons have action
- potentials, then it would still be possible, even if there are
- continuous signals at other places in the system, to study the
- relationships among axon firings using boolean methods. One would
- have to relate the firing of axon A to firings of others B, C, ... at
- previous time instants. In this way, one would factor out the
- continuous parts of the operations and concentrate on the functional
- modelling just based on boolean operations and time delays.
-
- Does anyone know if this has been tried?
- --
- ***************************************************
- 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
-