This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of utilise.

We've been attempting to reverse-engineer intelligence since the dawn of our own history — or at to the lowest degree since the time of the aboriginal Greeks, who carved the inscription "know thyself" at the temple of Apollo, Delphi. Throughout the ages, 1 old chestnut has stubbornly resisted yielding up its secret: the organizational principle behind the human brain. Now a group of scientists at Augusta University, Georgia, led by Dr. Joe Tsien, think they may exist onto the respond with a recent paper published in the periodical Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. If correct, it would send daze waves through the field of neuroscience and likely lead to the dawn of a new historic period for artificial intelligence as well.

1 experiment that confirmed at that place might be something like a universal computational principle at piece of work in the human being brain involved blindfolded mice. Blindfolding mice during crucial stages of development revealed that the areas of the brain traditionally associated with seeing would be repurposed over time for other mental tasks. This seemed to confirm that to a high degree, the encephalon of people and mice alike are plastic, that is reprogrammable in the style of a universal computing car.

theory of inteligence

Evidence of power of ii permutation logic in mice prison cell assemblies for processing food experiences. Epitome Source: Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience

But if in that location is some kind of unifying computational principle governing our gray matter, what is information technology? Dr. Tsien has studied this for over a decade, and he believes he'due south found the reply in something chosen the Theory of Connectivity.

"Many people accept long speculated that at that place has to be a basic design principle from which intelligence originates and the encephalon evolves, like how the double helix of DNA and genetic codes are universal for every organism," Tsien said. "We present bear witness that the brain may operate on an amazingly elementary mathematical logic."

The Theory of Connectivity holds that a simple algorithm, chosen a power-of-ii-based permutation taking the course of n=2 i -1 can exist used to explain the circuitry of the encephalon. To unpack the formula, allow'south define a few key concepts from the theory of connectivity, specifically the thought of a neuronal clique. A neuronal clique is a group of neurons which "fire together" and cluster into functional connectivity motifs, or FCMs, which the brain uses to recognize specific patterns or ideas. One tin liken it to branches on a tree, with the neuronal clique existence the smallest unit of connectivity, a mere twig, which when combined with other cliques, link upwards to class an FCM. The more than circuitous the idea being represented in the brain, the more convoluted the FCM. The north in northward=ii i -1 specifies the number of neuronal cliques that volition burn down in response to a given input, i.

In a recent paper, Tsien and company were able to test the theory by presenting mice with a number of different stimuli and recording the patterns of neurons that fired in response. The results would seem to bear out their hypothesis, with the algorithm correctly predicting the amount of neural tissue that would be activated in response to a given stimulus.

The results of the team's research are likely to ripple across neuroscience, almost importantly in the field of artificial intelligence, where a principle similar this could enable the creation of artificial brains that are wired in a mode straight akin to our own. Whether such a development is ultimately to be feared or praised is the subject field of a far-reaching debate. But it now looks increasingly sure nosotros volition have the answer sooner rather than later.