Neuroscience

How to rewire the brain with artificial axons to replace damaged pathways

Research promises to one day restore functionality for patients with damaged axons resulting from brain injury or disease

January 21, 2016

Penn State scientists have grown improved artificial transplantable artificial axons (brain pathways) in the lab. The new “micro-tissue engineered neural networks” (micro-TENNS) replace broken axon pathways when implanted in the brains of rats.

(Neurons are connected by long fibrous projections known as axons. When these connections are damaged, they have very limited capacity to regenerate — unlike many other cells in the body — thus permanently disrupting the body’s… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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Information flows through a subset of high-traffic ‘hub neurons’ in cortical regions of the brain

In many cortical regions, 70 percent of the brain's information passes through only a fifth of the neurons, which are more essential to brain function --- and also more vulnerable to disruption

January 21, 2016

A new study, reported in an open-access paper in the journalNeuroscience, shows that 70 percent of all information within cortical regions in the brain passes through only 20 percent of these regions’ neurons.

“The discovery of this small but information-rich subset of neurons within cortical regions suggests this sub-network might play a vital role in communication, learning and memory,” said Sunny Nigam, a Ph.D. candidate in the … read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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Memory capacity of brain is 10 times more than previously thought

The brain’s memory capacity is in the petabyte range, as much as the entire Web, data from the Salk Institute show; may lead to more energy-efficient computers

January 20, 2016

Salk researchers and collaborators have achieved critical insight into the size of neural connections, putting the memory capacity of the brain far higher than common estimates. The new work also answers a longstanding question as to how the brain is so energy efficient, and could help engineers build computers that are incredibly powerful but also conserve energy.

“This is a real bombshell in the field of neuroscience,” says … read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Computers/Infotech/UI

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Superintelligence: fears, promises, and potentials

Reflections on Bostrom’s Superintelligence, Yudkowsky’s From AI to Zombies, and Weaver and Veitas’s Open-Ended Intelligence

December 28, 2015

KurzweilAI is honored to publish this awesome article by artificial general intelligence guru Ben Goertzel. Focusing on the emergence of superintelligence — arguably the most important issue for our future — Ben expertly dissects, deconstructs, and challenges the arguments of the key experts, no words minced. Enjoy! — Amara D. Angelica, Editor, KurzweilAI.   

Ben Goertzel Ph.D.
Chairman, Novamente LLC
ben@goertzel.org

Abstract

… read more