Question: Has there been a comprehensive study on the activation function of a single (biological) neuron?
Yes, see the Hodgkin Huxley model [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodgkin%E2%80%93Huxley_model
Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? Massive Parallelism
51–55 of 55 posts
Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? Massive Parallelism
#52We don't know what operations the brain is actually doing, so declaring that it is performing them efficiently is pure speculation. Similarly, the brain surely has limits to parallelism, for the same sorts of reasons a computer does. You only have one mouth, so if two parts of the brain tried to speak, fully parallelized, you'd get nonsense at best. They have to agree on what to say, which is effectively serializatio…
The mouth as an example with regarding to speech doesn't work very well. People can say one thing, but say it in a way that means the complete opposite. So already we have tone incorporated into our speech. Who knows what kind of subconscious thoughts we embed into our speech that are not yet understood well. Then there's the combination of tone and the words, accent, body language and every other context embed into…
It doesn't matter what was factored into the speech, you still can't speak in parallel. It's not physically possible. At some point you need to get agreement as to what the output should be.
Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? Massive Parallelism
#53A brain is not equal to a computer or a processor.
You will never get the answer if you look at it from a narrow minded perspective.
A brain is equal to billions of processors connected in a highly naturally efficient network functioning almost effortlessly.
Something along these lines seems like a plausible comparison to a brain.
What is a brain is not equal to a processor but a neuron is equal to a processor?
Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? Massive Parallelism
#54My brain isn't efficient. I forget basic things sometimes.
Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? Massive Parallelism
#55Like a quantum computer, computing thousand calculations at once and the true answer is what remains? I guess there's a ... parallel there. And I know some people don't like this diductic reduction, analogy, metaphor, callitwhatyouwant. I'd welcome corrections.
The problem with trying to correct this is that it's not wrong, because it doesn't really state a hypothesis. Are you trying to say that brains are quantum computing devices? Maybe, but we don't have any particular evidence for that, so it's on a par with saying "The Flying Spaghetti Monster has a tiny noodly appendage that reaches through hyperspace into each neuron, and that's how we think." We can observe brains i…
I was being sarcastic, but then wasn't sure whether the comparison was actually wrong.