Connectionists: How the brain works

[Martin Spacek]

Somewhat off-topic, Stephen Colbert interviewed Steven Pinker on the Colbert 
Report in 2007, and asked him to describe, on the spot, how the brain works in 5 
words or less. His reply:

"Brain cells fire in patterns."

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/n36pgb/steven-pinker
(I think that's the link, but I'm outside the US so I can't view it.)

> Terry Sejnowski told us that the new Obama initiative is like the moon
> project. When this program was initiated we had no idea how to accomplish
> this, but dreams (and money) can be very motivating.
>
> This is a nice point, but I don't understand what a connection plan would
> give us. I think without knowing precisely where and how strong connections
> are made, and how each connection would influence a postsynaptic or glia etc
> cells, such information is useless. So why not having the goal of finding a
> cure for epilepsy?

Why not have the goal of finding a cure for epilepsy? I propose that 
neuroscience today is mostly a study of how the brain breaks. Unfortunately, for 
those of us that aren't so interested in a specific disease, or disease at all, 
grant proposals often still need to be couched in those terms.

Studying how a thing breaks can only get you so far. At some point, to really 
make progress, you need to figure out how the darn thing works when it ain't 
broke. That's what makes the Human Brain Project and the Brain Initiative 
worthwhile ventures, even if they aren't hypothesis driven.

Martin Spacek
PhD candidate, Graduate Program in Neuroscience
Swindale Lab
Dept. of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
http://mspacek.github.io