2009 is a promising year: After presenting at the Red Herring North America event the newspaper Tages-Anzeiger featured an article on us. You can download the original article in german or the english translation.
Watch this animation which shows how a neuron works. Don’t forget to check out the other elucidative videos on the same page.
(via neuroquantology.com)
How does the brain recognise faces or objects? The theory of the “grandmother cells” says that one neuron represents the person’s grandma. However, the brain needs a lot of these cells, if every recognizable part of our perception of life is coded by a grandmother cell.. A second idea, how brains recognise people and objects is to use a large network of neurons to recognize people and objects.
New research suggests a third method: Our brains use a “sparse-coding network”, in which small groups of neurons work together to recognize an object and in which each neuron may be able to join a few different groups.
(via discovermagazine.com)
IBM has created a software program called “Watson” that professes to understand and synthesize plain-language queries fast enough to compete with human contestants on the quiz show. And the aim of the European Large Knowledge Collider (LARKC) project is to go beyond the limited storage, querying and inference technology that is currently available for semantic computing. These two projects could mean science is on the path to creating a human level AI.
Read more about “The Rise of the Answerbots” (via hplusmagazine.com).
Many people are interested in products which promise to improve their memories and keep their brains fit. Software-based cognitive training and brain games seems like a good idea and are based on studies that show that living in an environment with lots of mental stimulation keeps the fit. However, these studies were done on rodents. And can these results be transferred to humans?
Read if brain jogging games are really worth the time and effort or if simply keeping a healthy diet, a regiment of regular exercise and trying new activities have more benefit.
(via sciam.com)
