Interesting. I’ve been thinking about (internally commited, but have yet to actually start) a summary/intro post about computational neuroscience for LW. Lukeprog has an article summarizing cognitive science already, but comp neurosci is quite different. I’m most interested in summarizing the set of ideas that are highly relevant to current AGI designs, rather than all of comp neurosci, so this may end up being quite different than what you are proposing. Or perhaps not, and perhaps we would be (somewhat) competing!
A potential viewpoint difference:
In particular, we know that the brain is divided into specialized areas at the macro level, and we understand some (though not very much) of the micro-level wiring that supports this specialization. It seems likely that each region of the brain has its own micro-level wiring to support its specialized function, and in some regions the wiring is likely to be quite complex.
Yes, there are specialized macro areas in adult brains. The more interesting question is how this specialization develops as a result of learning, because we also know that it is clearly not genetically pre-programmed in. In short, the cortex in particular appears to mainly use the same circuit everywhere, and all the various functionalities come out of local specialized wiring/synaptic adaptations that hint at powerful universal learning algorithms.
Interesting. I’ve been thinking about (internally commited, but have yet to actually start) a summary/intro post about computational neuroscience for LW. Lukeprog has an article summarizing cognitive science already, but comp neurosci is quite different. I’m most interested in summarizing the set of ideas that are highly relevant to current AGI designs, rather than all of comp neurosci, so this may end up being quite different than what you are proposing. Or perhaps not, and perhaps we would be (somewhat) competing!
A potential viewpoint difference:
Yes, there are specialized macro areas in adult brains. The more interesting question is how this specialization develops as a result of learning, because we also know that it is clearly not genetically pre-programmed in. In short, the cortex in particular appears to mainly use the same circuit everywhere, and all the various functionalities come out of local specialized wiring/synaptic adaptations that hint at powerful universal learning algorithms.