BrainStorm2

This article submitted by Vladimir Litvak on 7/12/97.

I'm writing you after I saw your WWW site. I'm finishing my third year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. So far I've studied enough to get a degree in biology and about half a degree in computer sciences.
I'm most interested in the brain and I took a lot of neuroscience related courses (about 10 or so). It's obvious that there are huge gaps between biological , cognitive and computational approaches to the brain and consciousness. I've seen a few kinds of neural nets models and it brought me the idea that it's possible to dismiss some of them by analysing the development and evolution of the brain and genetical mechanisms underlying them. If you just think in these terms, some of the suggestions for functions of various parts of the nervous systems made by the theoreticians coming from math can be dismissed instantly.
Thr first thing I read by Edelman was his review in "Neuron" from 1993. Some of his ideas were strikingly similar to what I've been thinking about lately. I also read Crick's "Neural Edelmanism" and was shocked more by Crick's style than by the content of it. Since I've studied computers, I don't think like Edelman that the word 'computation' is a taboo. As far as I'm concerned the semantics don't matter at all. What matters is the content and the explanatory power of the model.
I'm continuing to collect material about Edelman (which is a serious project by itself; I know you agree according to the remarks I've seen at your web site (BTW, I knew what 'neoteny' is)).
About your WWW site: It is not the only site related to Edelman but one of only a few; I saw that your ideas are also similar to mine. Especially the part about pooling the efforts in order to brige the gaps between various brain related disciplines.
A key to Watson & Crick's huge success was the fact that they were thinking simultaneously in terms of genetics , chemistry and cristallography while their competitors closed themselves in the shells of their disciplines and ignored all the others.
Anyway, I think Edelman is partly on the right track. Maybe we can do some 'brain storming' based on Edelman's theory and exchange ideas as they arise.
Thanks for investing you time into building your site.

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The above was a post to a discussion forum I once hosted on an old Mac IICX.
Only a few of the posts listed above are online. See:
Selection vs Instruction #22

If you would like to see any of the other posts that are not currently online contact John Schmidt at mindbrainsoul@yahoo.com
I can send you all of the original HTML files.