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Ask HN: What data structure does our brain use?

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Re: Ask HN: What data structure does our brain use?

#6

Post by espeed »

The brain most closely resembles a graph. See Marko's post on "Graphs, Brains, and Gremlin" ( http://markorodriguez.com/2011/07/14/graphs-brains-and-greml...).

Sebastian Seung is a leading researcher in the field of neuroscience called connectomics, which studies the wiring of the brain, and he is a professor at MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He is focused on mapping the connections between each neuron and calls the mappings our "connectome," which he says is as individual as our genome.

He says scientists have hypothesized for years that each thought, each memory is stored as a neural connection. See his TED talk "I Am My Connectome" (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sebastian_seung.html) and the Human Connectome Project (http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org).

Re: Ask HN: What data structure does our brain use?

#8

Post by Aarvay »

espeed wrote: post #6

The brain most closely resembles a graph. See Marko's post on "Graphs, Brains, and Gremlin" ( http://markorodriguez.com/2011/07/14/graphs-brains-and-greml... ). Sebastian Seung is a leading researcher in the field of neuroscience called connectomics, which studies the wiring of the brain, and he is a professor at MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He is focused on mapping the connections between each n…

Thanks espeed for the great info!

Re: Ask HN: What data structure does our brain use?

#9

Post by chubot »

A big part of the brain is the divide between conscious and unconscious. Your brain is constantly making random associations. If I read an article about Steve Jobs, I might remember something a friend said 10 years ago about him; and then I might remember that this friend lives in Brooklyn now; and then think about other people I know who live in Brooklyn. The brain just likes to make connections; perhaps synesthesia is an example of it getting slightly overworked.

I would say the unconscious part is basically the equivalent of a visiting a web page, Googling every term on that page, visiting those pages, and repeat nauseum (so like an inverted index perhaps on concepts/ideas/sensations rather than terms).

As for the conscious part, that's where the magic is. The unconscious brains generates breathtaking amounts of useless crap, but the conscious brain manages to filter it and do things like design software and make movies. I can't really speculate on how the conscious mind does this. Creativity is different than recall.

There is a feedback loop too. If your conscious mind starts ruminating on stuff, then the unconscious mind will generate more of it. We had a discussion about how writing down dreams causes you to produce/remember more of them. There is also the phenomena of playing a game like Tetris or Scrabble, and then your unconscious brain starts "rehearsing" all the moves in the background (sometimes against your will). It knows what you've been doing and just starts going off and making connections.

(If you are interested in this general subject, read "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins. It will at least get you thinking and he has pretty fairly concrete ideas. He doesn't go into what I am writing about here, but as far a books that pertain to your question, I was reminded of it.)

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