Connectionists: Brain-like computing fanfare and big data fanfare

[james bower]

so  much fun

thanks Axel,

First a personal note (in case any of you are wondering at my tone),   on Dec 31st I officially retired from my academic appointment in the University of Texas, by agreement with the State Attorney General.  :-).  So, in case anyone is wondering, I am now happily free - and feeling even less constrained than usual - a wonderful feeling.  After a total of about $30MM in total federal funding over the last 30 years, yesterday I spent the last $ 1,245.53.  Liberation.  :-)   The UT met all my conditions, only requiring that I not seek nor accept a position ever again in the University of Texas System.  :-)  easy to agree to that.  :-)

Anyway,  there are all kinds of levels of description of physical systems, and of course, careful understanding of the actual behavior of a physical system is very important.  Again, reference to the data on planetary motion that Kepler needed to do what he did.  However,  one has to be able to understand the restraints provided by the data on what sorts of functional interpretations one can make.  Kepler is one of my (few) scientific heroes because in spite of his natural predisposition to a kind of magical thinking about celestial harmonies, he still did the hard work that required the kind of messiness that he wasn’t predisposed to, because it was required by the data.

I have no problem with careful descriptions of human behavior - I have serious concerns about the use of that data to support (often through experimental manipulations these days often using the many knobs and uncontrolled variables in imaging studies) cognitive theories of brain function.  

Recent work of this kind in my poor cerebellum being a particularly unfortunate example.  The cerebellum is now being evoked as part of a growing number of cognitive theories, based largely on imaging (see below) and good old lesion studies, without any real fundamental consideration of the actual physical relationship between the structure and the rest of the brain, or the actual physiological organization of its networks.  The ‘cognitive guys’ don’t know and don’t care.  Instead, misinterpretations of both are being used to prop up the cognitive theory (for example, the supposed ‘timing function’ of the cerebellar parallel fibers).  

Again, a long discussion probably not of interest to most on this mailing list - anyone that wants references, happy to send them.

But once again - beware Ptolemy —  and lets add in pythagorus as well.  :-) (actual the later another hero of the angst that unignored reality caused him  :-) ).

Jim






On Jan 25, 2014, at 10:37 AM, Axel Hutt <axel.hutt at inria.fr> wrote:

> Hallo,
> 
> thanks to all for the important discussion.
> 
> [..]What that means inevitably, in my view, is that the only way we will ever understand what brain-like is, is to pay tremendous attention experimentally and in our models to the actual detailed anatomy and physiology of the brains circuits and cells.
> here I do not agree with you. Understanding cognitive processes makes it necessary to understand the major principles
> in encoding and decoding since the physiological  details are different for each subject while the basic underlying
> mechanism is (with high probability) the same. Hence, considering more anatomical details does not lead us that far.
> We recognize this in todays' research progress, where physiological neuroscientists extracts tons of detailed data 
> from different patients and do not understand it. One way out is the progress of theory, and not of collecting more data.
> 
> Best
> 
> 
> Axel

 

 

Dr. James M. Bower Ph.D.

Professor of Computational Neurobiology

Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies.

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