X-Message-Number: 25886
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 07:46:32 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: To Yvan Bozzonetti, on making brains

To Yvan Bozzonetti:

Your plans for an electronic simulation of a brain have been trumped
by research into how brains work. Neurons are NOT static entities,
nor are their connections. They're constantly growing and changing,
and that growth and change is what causes us to learn (acquire really
long term memories).

You aren't a reader of PERIASTRON so you won't be able to just look
back at old issues to see citations of research on growth and change
in our brain. If you don't want to take my word on this question
that's OK; but since you clearly haven't listened, I will get together
some references and put them on Cryonet.

However some facts known to everyone who studies brains should be
already known to you. Yes, there remains some argument about whether
other areas in our brain grow new functioning neurons. However one
area in our hippocampus in now universally accepted as growing new 
functional neurons (and of course eliminating others). It is the
dentate gyrus. And note that the dentate gyrus is part of our 
hippocampus, which plays an indispensable role in at least one
kind of memory. 

Am I claiming that an ARTIFICIAL brain cannot be built? Not at all.
But it had better have components which act like neurons, and doing
so with solid electronic circuits doesn't look to me like an good
way of doing it. Bluntly, it's a piss poor way of doing it.

           Best wishes and long long life to all,

                Thomas Donaldson

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