This is an extremely interesting video by William Softky, who among many other accomplishments, invented and managed a key innovation in Microsoft’s PreFix automatic debugging technology, which nearly eliminated “Blue Screen of Death” crashes in Windows 2000/XP.
Tag Archives: brain
Brain science
Most famous for his work with Palm where he took part in creating the first handheld computers, Jeff Hawkins has recently got himself into neuroscience.
In a TEDTalks video urges us to take a new look at the brain — to see it not as a fast processor, but as a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next.
- Why we don’t have a good brain theory.
- What it’s important.
- What we can do about it.
Hawkins argues that what’s lacking is a theoretical framework. We have lots of data, but little in the way of theory. This is where Hawkins seeks to contribute, most famously with his hierarchical temporal model of memory. Memoirs of a Postgrad has a far better summary of the theory here. The theory is that the brain is basically a big memory system that uses past experiences to make predictions about the future – this is Hawkins’ definition of intelligence. So in this view, we literally learn from experience.
Coaxing computers to perform basic acts of perception and robotics, let alone high-level thought, has been difficult. No existing computer can recognize pictures, understand language, or navigate through a cluttered room with anywhere near the facility of a child. Hawkins and his colleagues have developed a model of how the neocortex performs these and other tasks.
The theory, call Hierarchical Temporal Memory, explains how the hierarchical structure of the neocortex builds a model of its world and uses this model for inference and prediction. To turn this theory into a useful technology, Hawkins has created a company called Numenta. Hawkins describes the theory, its biological basis, and a software platform created by Numenta that allows anyone to apply this theory to a variety of problems. Part of this theory was described in a book he co-authored in 2004 called “On Intelligence”.
22 minutes
Fibromyalgia Updates 2009
ScienceDaily (June 18, 2009) — Previous studies have shown that fibromyalgia is associated with reductions in gray matter in parts of the brain, but the exact cause is not known. Using sophisticated brain imaging techniques, researchers from Louisiana State University, writing in The Journal of Pain, found that alterations in levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine might be responsible for gray matter reductions. — Fibromyalgia Patients Show Decreases In Gray Matter Intensity
Mindreading No: Thought Pattern Recognition Yes
In 2007 there were reports that a team of world-leading neuroscientists developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and read their intentions before they act. I decided to track down the media reports and discovered an excellent video as well.
This research broke controversial new ground in scientists’ ability to probe people’s thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.
The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.
In the experiment, the brain activity of two subjects (two of Gallant’s team members, Kendrick Kay and Thomas Naselaris) was monitored while they were shown 1,750 different pictures. The team then selected 120 novel images that the subjects hadn’t seen before, and used the previous results to predict their brain responses. When the test subjects were shown one of the images, the team could match the actual brain response to their predictions to accurately pick out which of the pictures they had been shown. With one of the participants they were correct 72% of the time, and with the other 92% of the time; on chance alone they would have been right only 0.8% of the time. – Neuroscience: How far has “mind reading” got?
