Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
quantamagazine.org
Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
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Re: Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
#2“Brains may be far more complicated than we think,” as said by anyone who has worked with brains! Good stuff though, very interesting :)
Re: Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
#3[deleted]
Re: Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
#4OT, but "They obtained slices of brain tissue from layers 2 and 3 of the human cortex" has a slightly uncomfortable air to it.
Re: Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
#5I wonder if this is also the case for neurons in other animals. Probably it is, but it would be a stunning revelation if it is not the case.
Re: Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
#6So does this point to us being biological machines? Is it already accepted that we are biological machines?
Re: Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
#7I remember reading this before, in a comment somewhere here on HN
Re: Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
#8So does this point to us being biological machines? Is it already accepted that we are biological machines?
You'll have to be more specific with what you mean by "machines". In what ways would machines be different from non-machines?
Re: Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
#9“Brains may be far more complicated than we think,” as said by anyone who has worked with brains! Good stuff though, very interesting :)
As said by a brain studying brains
Re: Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons
#10Knowing little about neuroscience outside of biology class, I've always wondered why neurons would be so simple as to just compute weighted sums and thresholds.
I mean there are unicellular creatures that can do incredibly complex things, and neurons, as all cells, are ultimately the descendants of such unicellular organisms, "teamed up" into a multi-cellular creature. They have a lot of internal structure, organelles, whatnot. Modeling them as some simple switches seems a stretch.
My point is, overall this doesn't seem so surprising to me as a layman. (Which doesn't mean more than just literally that. I'm not claiming laypeople should decide scientific questions from their armchairs.)