Connectionists: Transient subnetwork selection: a new paradigm to replace connectionism?

[Danko Nikolic]

Dear all,

I am happy to announce that my paper, the draft of which has been discussed
on this list, has yesterday finally been published after a peer review.

This is probably the most important paper I have done in my career so far.

To remind you, the paper proposes a new paradigm as an alternative to
connectionism. To understand the mind, synapses are not so important any
more. Instead, critical are some other types of proteins on the neural
membrane. These proteins have the capability to transiently select
subnetworks that will be functional in the next few seconds or minutes. The
paradigm proposes that cognition emerges from those transient subnetwork
selections (and not from network computations of the classical, the
so-called connectionist paradigm). The proteins in question are
metabotropic receptors and G protein-gated ion channels. Simply put, we
think with those proteins. A result of a thought is a new state of network
pathways, not the activity of neurons.

I would like to thank the list for many of the comments that I received and
that helped me improve the manuscript. For example, very useful was the
information on the learning algorithms able to learn the n-bit parity
problem (aka, generalized XOR), which I used to illustrate the scaling
problems of deep learning. This made my supplementary materials much
better.

The paper can be downloaded without a paywall for 50 days, here:
https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1gVvg5Fq7aXeir

The new version of the paper is much better than the original draft. It has
more information, clearer explanations and improved structure.

I hope the paper inspires people to investigate possibilities beyond
connectionism both for understanding the brain and for building AI.

For myself, I would love to build an AI based on these principles.

Thanks a lot.

Danko


Dr. Danko Nikolić
www.danko-nikolic.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/danko-nikolic/
-- I wonder, how is the brain able to generate insight? --
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