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TITLE: A Systems Architecture Approach to the Brain: From Neurons to Consciousness
PRESENTER: L. Andrew Coward, http://cs.anu.edu.au/~Andrew.Coward/, andrewc@cs.anu.edu.au
AFFILIATION:Department of Computer Science, Australian National University, http://cs.anu.edu.au
DATE: Friday 24th February 2006
TIME: 12:00:00
PLACE: CSE Seminar Room L1 K17
ABSTRACT:
It can be demonstrated on system theoretical grounds that any system
which learns to perform many behavioural features with limited
information handling resources is constrained within a set of bounds
called the recommendation architecture by the requirement to find a
compromise between the need to conserve physical information handling
resources and the need to learn without severe interference with
earlier learning. Overall architecture, the definition of modules and
components, and even device algorithms are all constrained, with the
severity of the constraints increasing as the ratio of features to
resources increases. Algorithms widely used in artificial neural
networks cannot be used in some major subsystems of the recommendation
architecture. There are strong resemblances between the physical forms
of a system within the recommendation architecture bounds and the
physiology of the human brain including separations between and
functions of the cortex, hippocampus, thalamus, basal ganglia,
cerebellum, hypothalamus and amygdala; the internal organization of
the cortex into layers, columns and areas; and the topology and
synaptic algorithms of neurons. Detailed psychological observations of
a wide range of cognitive phenomena, including semantic, episodic,
working and procedural memory; processes such as arithmetic; the
deficits resulting from physical damage; and sleep with dreaming can be
modelled in a physiologically plausible manner by a system within the
recommendation architecture bounds. Learning can be bootstrapped from
experience with minimal and plausible a priori information. Many
phenomena labelled "conscious" can be modelled in terms of physiology.
Electronic systems within the recommendation architecture bounds
confirm the capabilities of the architecture and point the way to
implementation of systems with human like cognitive capabilities.
BIOGRAPHY OF SPEAKER:
Andrew was employed by Nortel Networks as a system designer and
architect in the design of extremely complex real time control
telecommunications systems from 1969 to 1999, and participated in
successful projects to design and introduce commercially successful
state of the art systems with up to 20 million lines of code and custom
integrated circuit based hardware. While still employed as a system
architect, he wrote a book on understanding the brain as a system,
introducing a novel cognitive architecture. He subsequently obtained a
US patent for system architectures which can learn to manage a complex
telecommunications network based on the cognitive architecture. Since
1999 he has been full time in academic research into cognitive systems,
most recently as a research fellow in the Department of Computer
Science at the Australian National University.
His new book, A Systems Architecture Approach to the Brain: from
Neurons to Consciousness, was published in December 2005 and will be
introduced at this seminar.
Host:
Seminar Convenor:
Van Hai Ho
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