Related papers: Has the Brain Maximized its Information Storage Ca…
The fundamental, powerful process of computation in the brain has been widely misunderstood. The paper [1] associates the general failure to build intelligent thinking machines with current reductionist principles of temporal coding and…
Through evolution, animals have acquired central nervous systems (CNSs), which are extremely efficient information processing devices that improve an animal's adaptability to various environments. It has been proposed that the process of…
This work introduces the Koha model, a new theory that aims to explain two unresolved phenomena within biological neural networks: How information is processed and stored within neural circuits, and how neurons learn to become pattern…
The neural networks of the brain are capable of learning statistical input regularities on the basis of synaptic learning, functional integration into increasingly larger, interconnected neural assemblies, and self organization. This self…
The space of possible behaviors complex biological systems may exhibit is unimaginably vast, and these systems often appear to be stochastic, whether due to variable noisy environmental inputs or intrinsically generated chaos. The brain is…
It is widely believed that the particular wiring observed within cortical columns boosts neural computation. We use rewiring of neural networks performing real-world cognitive tasks to study the validity of this argument. In a vast survey…
Recent cellular-level volumetric brain reconstructions have revealed high levels of anatomic complexity. Determining which structural aspects of the brain to focus on, especially when comparing with computational models and other organisms,…
I consider a topographic projection between two neuronal layers with different densities of neurons. Given the number of output neurons connected to each input neuron (divergence) and the number of input neurons synapsing on each output…
Performing more tasks in parallel is a typical feature of complex brains. These are characterized by the coexistence of excitatory and inhibitory synapses, whose percentage in mammals is measured to have a typical value of 20-30\%. Here we…
Mammalian functional architecture flexibly adapts, transitioning from integration where information is distributed across the cortex, to segregation where information is focal in densely connected communities of brain regions. This…
Cue integration, the combination of different sources of information to reduce uncertainty, is a fundamental computational principle of brain function. Starting from a normative model we show that the dynamics of multi-compartment neurons…
This paper investigates whether the hexagonal structure of grid cells provides any performance benefits or if it merely represents a biologically convenient configuration. Utilizing the Vector-HaSH content addressable memory model as a…
Finding the maximum cut of a graph (MAXCUT) is a classic optimization problem that has motivated parallel algorithm development. While approximate algorithms to MAXCUT offer attractive theoretical guarantees and demonstrate compelling…
Memory is inherently entangled with prediction and planning. Flexible behavior in biological and artificial agents depends on the interplay of learning from the past and predicting the future in ever-changing environments. This chapter…
The interplay between structure and function is crucial in determining some emerging properties of many natural systems. Here we use an adaptive neural network model inspired in observations of synaptic pruning that couples activity and…
The concept of feature selectivity in sensory signal processing can be formalized as dimensionality reduction: in a stimulus space of very high dimensions, neurons respond only to variations within some smaller, relevant subspace. But if…
The ability to form memories is a basic feature of learning and accumulating knowledge. But where is memory information stored in the brain? Within the scientific research community, it is generally believed that memory information is…
Despite differences in brain sizes and cognitive niches among mammals, their cerebral cortices posses many common features and regularities. These regularities have been a subject of experimental investigation in neuroanatomy for the last…
A formula for an average connectivity between cortical areas in mammals is derived. Based on comparative neuroanatomical data, it is found, surprisingly, that this connectivity is either only weakly dependent or independent of brain size.…
Avoiding overfitting is a central challenge in machine learning, yet many large neural networks readily achieve zero training loss. This puzzling contradiction necessitates new approaches to the study of overfitting. Here we quantify…