neurocore: The chip.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/brainsinsilicon/goals.html

any computer science people here know anything about this? What is the particular unique promise of this thing?

 

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It appears to be a computer chip analogue for modeling the behavior of several types of brain cell and their interactions that allows the user to change a number of the parameters to see how an individual brain cell may interact with other brain cells in response to certain stimuli. Example: a sensory neuron detects an "itch" signal and sends a "scratch" signal to a motor neuron.

A typical neuron can have 10,000 dendrites that connect via synaptic junction with almost that many other brain cells. Each synapse can have a bunch of neurotransmitters that traverse the synaptic gap with an adjacent synapse (ex, dopamine, serotonin, endocannabinoids etc). The set of neurotransmitters that cross that gap, how fast they are uptaken and how fast they are sent back where they came from are just a few of the variables involved.

The point of creating a computer model is to learn more about these interactions, what drives them and how they work. The point of doing that is so we can make more efficient and faster computers with the end goal of making truly independent robotic devices that can respond to an emergency or sudden change without need of direction, say for an in - home robotic assistant to help an aged person remain living in their home rather than in a nursing care facility or a dock robot that will just unload the ship without supervision - and won't step on a stray cat that runs out from under a crate.

The next step is artificial intelligence - truly 'living, learning' intelligence. The futurists say that the first human - robot marriages will take place before 2050. Sending a robot off on a plasma drive ship to Proxima Centari would be an interesting thing to do...or to hire some to mine water from the crater bottoms at the moons N pole.

Another objective is to create an "artificial brain" that would have the potential to act as a human brain would in all of the necessary ways and then to somehow "transfer" a human mind into this device. This would open up a whole new way of dealing with death or severe handicaps. Got an incurable disease? We'll just slap your mind into a shiny new robot or android body and you are good to go for another 100,000 miles or so. You can even attend your own funeral!

Additionally, we do not really understand yet how an insect who has far fewer neurons that a human can have a mind as complex as it does. This is another tool to help us understand such differences in neuronal architecture.

 

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