Nautilus

Stop Saying the Brain Learns By Rewiring Itself

Neuroscientists have not come to terms with the truth that it does not make sense to say that something stores information but cannot store numbers.Illustration by Gary Waters / Getty Images

Most neuroscientists believe that the brain learns by rewiring itself—by changing the strength of connections between brain cells, or neurons. But experimental results published a few years ago, from a lab at Lund University in Sweden, hint that we need to change our approach. They suggest the brain learns in a way more analogous to that of a computer: It encodes information into molecules inside neurons and reads out that information for use in computational operations.

With a computer scientist, Adam King, I co-authored We argued that well-established results in cognitive science and computer science imply that computation in the brain must resemble computation in a computer in just this way. So, of course, I am fascinated by these results.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Nautilus

Nautilus10 min readIntelligence (AI) & Semantics
How AI Can Save the Zebras
Tanya Berger-Wolf didn’t expect to become an environmentalist. After falling in love with math at 5 years old, she started a doctorate in computer science in her early 20s, attracting attention for her cutting-edge theoretical research. But just as s
Nautilus3 min read
The Power of Regret
One of the primary motivators of human behavior is avoiding regret. Before the legendary behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky formalized prospect theory and loss aversion, they believed that regret avoidance was at the root of the h
Nautilus3 min read
Unraveling The Evolution Of Flight
The archeopteryx, a small animal that lived around 150 million years ago, resembles a cross between an ancient Jurassic dinosaur and a modern-day bird. Measuring about 20 inches long from its teeth to the end of its long tail, it had black-feathered

Related Books & Audiobooks