[ExI] simulation

[Chris Hibbert]

> On Sunday 16 December 2007, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>> > How complex is a simulation of a single cortical column?  Sorry if I
>> >   missed that critical bit of information.
> 
> For a mouse, that's 100k neurons and 30 million synapses.

That's true if you think it makes sense to simulate at the biological 
level.  I think it makes more sense to simulate at the functional level. 
   The place I'd start is with a very careful read of Jeff Hawkins' "On 
Intelligence".

http://books.google.com/books?id=Qg2dmntfxmQC

Hawkins proposes a pretty thorough model of how the cortical columns 
work individually, and how they work together to produce a predicting 
machine that is likely to support intelligence.  You could try to 
construct such a thing yourself, or you could look into the results that 
his institute has produced.  I think they're either selling or 
open-sourcing their models.  Someone here surely knows more.

A simulation at this level would be a lot cheaper, and if Hawkins is 
right, would capture the essential emergent properties of the cortex' 
building blocks.

Chris
-- 
All sensory cells [in all animals] have in common the presence of
... cilia [with a constant] structure.  It provides a strong
argument for common ancestry.  The common ancestor ... was a
spirochete bacterium.
   --Lynn Margulis (http://edge.org/q2005/q05_7.html#margulis)

Chris Hibbert
hibbert at mydruthers.com
Blog:   http://pancrit.org