22 November 2012

Wise worm

For more than twenty-five years, scientists have known the exact wiring diagram of the three hundred and two neurons in the C. Elegans roundworm, but in at least half a dozen attempts nobody has yet succeeded in building a computer simulation that can accurately capture the complexities of the simple worm’s nervous system.
-- Gary Marcus.

Unlike Moore's Law for processors, understanding of how the brain actually works, of the computations and circuits that are underlie neural function, is not doubling every eighteen to twenty-four months.

P.S. See also Worms do the wave to translate messages.

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