On Wed, Apr 23, 2025 at 3:53 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
*>The brain cannot learn, for the trivial reason that brain doesn't exist. > "* > *You've managed to convince me that in specific cases your ever present mantra, "X does not exist", where X is any noun adjective or adverb except for consciousness, is actually true. For example: Cosmin Visan's brain does not exist. * *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* evc On Tuesday, 22 April 2025 at 22:26:17 UTC+3 John Clark wrote: > >> *It has long been known that learning and long-term memories are produced >> by the strengthening and weakening of synaptic connections between neurons, >> called "neuron plasticity", but it has not been clear what determines which >> synapses are modified during learning in memory formation and by how much. >> Two articles in the April 18, 2025 issue of the Journal Science cast some >> light on that mystery: * >> >> *Dendritic arbors structure memories* >> <https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adx0640> >> >> *Distinct synaptic plasticity rules operate across dendritic compartments >> in vivo during learning* >> <https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads4706> >> >> *It turns out which of the many dendrites that a neuron that receives an >> input signal is important in choosing what rules that neuron will follow, >> which in turn determines whether the entire neuron will fire or not. Some >> neurons pay more attention to signals from nearby neurons while others find >> distant neurons to be more interesting. And synapses in different parts of >> the brain have different rules. This increases the information storage >> capacity of a single neuron.* >> >> *William J Wright, the lead author of the paper says: * >> >> *“When people talk about synaptic plasticity, it’s typically regarded as >> uniform within the brain, our research provides a clearer understanding of >> how synapses are being modified during learning, with potentially important >> health implications since many diseases in the brain involve some form of >> synaptic dysfunction.”* >> >> * Takaki Komiyama another author of the paper says: * >> >> *“This discovery fundamentally changes the way we understand how the >> brain solves the credit assignment problem, with the concept that >> individual neurons perform distinct computations in parallel in different >> subcellular compartments.”* >> >> *I wouldn't be surprised if AI scientists take note of this and make a >> neural net in a similar way to see if that improves performance, but just >> because nature produces intelligence in a certain way is no guarantee that >> is the best way to do it. * >> >> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0EUak0x-RfE6z2WOEwMFpu%3DGoODX%3D3OqYwFnKg8NV9ew%40mail.gmail.com.
