Alan Turing and Neural Computation

(Caveat: for the sake of exposition, at times I articulate past views in slightly anachronistic terms; I do my best to capture the gist of what Alan Turing and others meant in terms that contemporary readers should find perspicuous.) The computational theory of cognition says that cognition is largely explained …

Susanna Schellenberg will livestream “Subjective Perspectives and Perceptual Variance” on May 6

The next Neural Mechanisms Online webinar “Subjective Perspectives and Perceptual Variance” will be delivered by Susanna Schellenberg on May 6th. See below for details about the free talk and how to join.  Subjective Perspectives and Perceptual Variance Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers) 6 May 2022 h14-16 Greenwhich Mean Time / 16-18 …

Towards a Multilevel, Mechanistic, Computational, Representational Explanation of Cognition

When I was in graduate school at Pitt around the late 1990s, I hung out with some faculty and students in the Psych Department. One day I asked one of the more ambitious Psych grad students, “what’s the future of psychology?” He answered without hesitation: “cognitive neuroscience”. Since then, psychology …

Unthinkable Pasts and Undreamable Futures: A Role of History for Scientists

I am not a historian. This thought did not occur to me when I set out three years ago to write a book about my field of computational neuroscience, but it has occurred to me many times since. I knew I wanted the book be more than just be a …

Let Go of Your Expertise to Tell a Better Story

Unexpectedly, the eyeball turned out to be the problem. There I was, writing a book about the brain, a manuscript that became The Spike: An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds, and I was stuck. The big picture was clear in my mind: I wanted to tell the …

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